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LABRADOR 




NASKAPI 



LABRADOR 



BY 

WILLIAM B. CABOT 



WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS 
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS 




BOSTON 

SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 






Copyright, 1920, 

By small, MAYNARD & COMPANY 

(incorporated) 



JAN -5 1921 
©CU604876 



PREFACE 

It has been said by some one, within recent years, 
that all the places now unexplored were so miserably 
bad that no one would care to have anything to do with 
them. The caribou country or northeastern Labrador 
may or may not be an exception to this rule. There 
are worse regions to wander in. Moreover, the people 
are to be considered. Not every one cares for native 
races, but most wilderness travelers do. I have myself 
found the Labrador people well worth while. 

The Indian names I have used need some explana- 
tion. Assiwaban, the name of the fine stream the 
George .River people come to the coast by, is pro- 
nounced As-si-waw-ban. It means " Waiting place," 
from a deer pass near the coastal height of land where 
the Indians camp and wait for the migration to come 
from north. The river, or brook, as the shore whites 
call these larger streams, is best known to the bay 
people as Frank's Brook, from the name of a one- 
time resident near its mouth. These personal names 
given to bays and rivers are more or less subject to 
change, accordingly as the settlers change and succeed 
one another. One year the river may be Smith's, 
another year Jones's, and in due time, perhaps, Robin- 
son's. I have taken pleasure in rescuing the names of 
some of these clear Indian rivers, particularly the As- 
siwaban, and the N6-ta-qua-n6n, from the ignominy 
of shifting white nomenclature. Likewise I have used 



vi Preface 

the Eskimo name 0-pe-tik Bay for the Merryfield Bay 
of Low's map, partly because the latter name is not 
used now, even by the shore people, who have reverted 
to the ancient designation, never in fact abandoned by 
them, of Opetik, 

Mistastin means, as nearly as our clumsy out-door 
English permits, " Where the wind blows everything 
oH the ground," that is, moss and trash and light soil. 

The personal names are mostly explained in the text. 
Kamoques is pronounced in three syllables. In Ashi- 
maganish the accented a is like a in father. I am sorry 
to say that the name of old Nijwa is incorrect, although 
Nijwa is something like it. The meaning of her actual 
name is Snipe, yellow-leg sinpe. Ah-pe-wat, as well 
Ah-pe-w6t, means an imbedded pebble, as in pudding- 
stone. " You know the Httle stones that grow inside 
a rock? " said old E., my chief source of information 
in such matters, " They are Ah-pe-wat." As to Pi- 
a-shun-a-hwao, who by the way is a worthy son of the 
great chief at Ungava, old E. explained, " When you 
shoot anything handy, that's Pi-a-shun-a-hwao." The 
a in the first and last syllables of P.'s name is long, as 
in fate ; the other a might be o or uh. 

One or two English names I have changed, for 
reasons which are commonplace. One cannot be 
wholly unrestrained when writing of living people. 
The happenings related, however, if not exciting, are 
at least true. I wish I had felt competent to deal with 
the subject of Dr. Grenf ell's remarkable mission work, 
as well as that of the Moravians. I owe much to the 
kindness of both establishments. 

The map inserted is rather a sketch. The coast is 
taken mainly from the sea chart, a poor reliance. In- 



Preface vii 

land the distances are only estimated, and the courses 
taken with a small hunting compass, but the longitude 
64° 25', at the. west end of the portage between the 
Kanekautsh lakes, should be a pretty good one. It 
fixes the position of the George River, ten or eleven 
miles farther west, and a rather important matter, I 
should not care, however, to insist upon the exactness 
of even this observation, as it is not easy to keep one's 
timepieces steady in such rough travel as was involved. 
Still we had three good watches, carefully rated. 

The Montagnias route by the No-ta-quanon is, of 
course, not drawn to scale. Like all Indian maps, it 
is made only to travel by. For this purpose, however, 
their maps are often better than ours. One needs to 
be used to their method. 

I have named the regular Indian height of land 
crossing at the head of Hawk Lake, the Quackenbush 
Pass ; the fine trap headland at the west end of Mistastin 
Lake, Walcott Dyke, and the low but commanding hill 
at the outlet of Mistinipi, and from which Dr. Howe 
and I took observations in 19 10, Howe Hill. 

The larger part of the material presented in this 
book was issued in my " Northern Labrador," and is 
here given in revised and amplified form. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Preface v 

I Labrador i 

II Newfoundland 13 

III The Atlantic Coast 29 

IV Fanny's Harbor . ....... 45 

V Indians 57 

VI 1904 132 

VII 1905 161 

VIII 1906 187 

IX 1910 267 

X Mice 292 

XI Southeast 300 

XII Eskimo Bay and River . . . . . .311 

XIII Observations ......... 33^ 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Naskapi '. . Frontispiece "^ 

Page 

A Game Pass at Mistastin Headland 4 . 

Waiting for Fish 12 

Hauling a Trap 12 

The Cape Race Coast . 16 

A Small Berg 16 

Off Battle Harbor 24 

Wallace, Hubbard, and Elson 32 

Undercut Ice, Fanny's Harbor, July 22 32 

The Cook of the Cambria 44 

Overturning Ice, Near Voisey's Bay, 1905 44 

At Red Point 50 

Davis Inlet 50 

Daniel's Summer House 58 

Daniel's Dogs 58 

From Daniel's House 62 

Looking Across Davis Inlet 62 

The Noahs Sphtting Fish, Tuhpungiuk in Background 68 

Un'sekat 68 

Summer Ptarmigan 74 

Winter Ptarmigan 74 

Spracklin 84 

Cod 84 

Kamoques 92 

Ah-pe-wat 104 

Sea Trout at Un'sekat 114 



xii Labrador 

Page 

Square tail and Lake Trout, Assiwaban River, 1906 . 114 

Jim Lane . 122 

A Bear, Bear Pond, 1905 122 

A Finback, Hawk Harbor 130 

The Beginning of the Pack, Cape Harrigan, 1905 . . 130 

The Wind Lake of the Assiwaban, Cabot Lake . . . 140 

Wolverene, under side 146 

Sunmier Wolverene 146 

An Indian Offering. Bear's SkuU on Pole 150 

A Weathered Boulder, Mistastin Lake 150 

On the High Portage. The Steeper Part is Below . . 158 

A Good Roof 158 

Indian Camp in the Barrens 164 

A Traveling Tent 164 

Guests 168 

Barren Ground Lake, Tshinutivish, 1906 168 

Pounding Pemmican 172 

Ostinitsu 176 

On the Assiwaban 180 

White Moss Slopes with Caribou Paths, Mistinipi , . 186 

Assiwaban River, from West of High Portage .... 190 

A Mosquito Day. Dr. Howe in 1910 190 

Mistinipi 196 

The White Moss Hills, Near Mistinipi 196 

Nahpayo, Pakuunnoh, Ah-pe-wat, 1906 204 

From the High Portage 204 

Abram and George Lane 210 

Sam Bromfield with Salmon, 1906 210 

Enough for a Cache 224 

Hair Skins Drying, Mistinipi, 1906 224 

A Raised Beach 232 

Making Pemmican and Working Skins, Mistinipi . . 240 



Labrador xiii 

Page 

A Windy Camp 244 

Caribou 248 

A Windrow of Horns 254 

Long Pond, from Caribou Hill 260 

Watching the Caribou. Lookout and Deer Crossing at 

Mistinipi 264 

Puckway 266 

A Mistinipi Bearskin 270 

Fleshing a Deerskin with Double Leg Bone of a Deer 270 

Nijwa, Dressed wholly in Caribou Skins 274 

A Food Scaffold 278 

Crushed Marrowbones from perhaps a Thousand Deer 278 

At Davis Inlet 286 

A Dead Fall, Mistinipi, 1910 286 

Tshinutivish 290 

In a Tshinutivish Lodge 304 

Hair Skins, Mistinipi, 1906 304 

A Tshinutivish Lodge. Broihng a Whitefish .... 314 



IN NORTHERN LABRADOR 



CHAPTER I 

LABRADOR 

Interior Labrador, if a country of severe winter 
conditions, and not too easy to travel in at any time, 
is not quite the desolation generally supposed. Un- 
available for most purposes it is, even as regions of 
its rather high latitudes go, and of course an utter 
wilderness, but its name is worse than it deserves. The 
peninsula is seldom cold in summer, and if its rivers 
were less difficult it would be more widely known as a 
field of exploring and travel; and also, from its great 
extent, as a nearly inexhaustible one. The usual 
summer wanderer at least is not in a way to make much 
impression upon its spaces. Nor after all does such a 
country appeal to the many. It is too elemental a land. 

The long Atlantic coast of the peninsula, rocky, berg 
sentineled, and barren, has failed in the eyes of navi- 
gators from the first. To hardy Leif Ericson it ap- 
peared a " land good for nothing " ; he called it Hellu- 
land, " Flat-stone Land," and sailed away. Worse yet 
was old Jacques Cartier's oft-quoted title, " The land 
which God gave Cain " ; a sincerity, touched by what- 
ever of temperament, which brooks no counter. He 
spoke as he saw. But it is to be remembered that 



2 Labrador 

Jacques Cartier was born to sunny France, and saw 
only the blasted outer shores of the peninsula — per- 
haps in one of its sunless, harder moods. It is fortu- 
nately true that the exposed coasts of the world are 
not always to be taken as an index of what is to be 
found within, and the coasts of Cartier's bitter word 
are faced to polar blasts unbroken. 

The trouble with interior Labrador, the great table- 
land, is less climatic than geological; it has little soil. 
The last ice-cap, which left the country only a little 
time since, as such periods go, ground away the rocks, 
already old, to their hard, unweathering base ; and upon 
this foundation soil makes but slowly. If there were 
enough soil almost the whole tableland would be 
forested high. 

Yet climate brought the ice-cap, and climate has 
played its full part. The present period finds the 
peninsula surrounded by cold seas, ice locked for many 
months of the year, never ice free excepting on the 
very south. The winds from all shores are cold. 
What the aspect of the country was when the broad 
interior sea from Hudson's Bay south, the Central 
Sea, made for warmer currents, none can now say. 
There has been time and change enough for anything. 
This long-enduring land, one of the oldest primal faces 
of the globe, may have been the cradle of the human 
race. It lies in moderate latitudes, little as this may 
have counted in the past, for coal and fern fossils are 
found still farther to the north. England, with its 
scarce-freezing winters, lies level to the east; the ex- 
treme of Scotland is broad off the swirling ice fields of 
Ungava Bay, as high in latitude, almost, as the farthest 
northern extension of the peninsula. The northern 



Labrador 3 

limit of Labrador's main body is only the parallel of 
60°, a parallel which in many places cuts through settled 
lands, through waving wheatfields often, around the 
world. 

In the earlier ages of the unchanging old peninsula 
its territorial neighbors were only in the building. 
Other lands, far and near, were made and unmade, the 
sea came and the sea went, while this old cornerpost 
of the continent held its ancient place, not much changed 
in outline, but wearing, wearing, wearing down through 
inconceivable time. Wide were the transformations of 
other areas of the hemisphere, and by comparison 
rapid, a turmoil of continental forms. 

So it is that the actual age of what one now sees in 
the peninsula is hopelessly beyond reckoning. In 
valleys eroded far into the older rocks have been found 
deposits of the more recent Cambrian measures, laid 
down since the valleys were completed. The valleys 
had been cut down in previous ages by a process so 
slow that our minds fail before it. Yet this " recent " 
Cambrian, laid in after the valleys had reached their 
depth, has been thought to date back twenty-eight 
million years. ^ Even then the tale is not told. The 
under rock, the " basement complex " of geology, is 
believed to have been formed from sediments too; the 
real foundation is below. 

Now the peninsula is mainly an uneven waste of 
low hills and ridges. The glacial moraines and the 
terraced drift of the valleys bear trees only sparsely, 
save to the south and in low valleys near the sea. So 
recently was the ice-cap over all that the innumerable 
Indian-known lakes of the plateau have not had time 

1 Far more, by latest chronologies. 



4 Labrador 

to drain themselves by cutting down their outlets or to 
become silted up by material from higher levels. Their 
life falls almost within the historic old-world period. 
Not many thousand years, at any rate, a negligible span 
geologically, may well cover the time since the ice de- 
parted. In earlier time, while the glaciers were still 
moving seaward, the coast was flanked by bergs from its 
own inland, and the stately procession which now passes 
from Baffin's Bay along the coast may have been locked 
in the north, or forced to a distant offing. 

Exploitation in the modern sense has found no foot- 
hold, save for a few lumber and pulp operations in the 
outer valleys of the south. Minerals may well appear 
on the western side, difficult of access now, and there 
is iron in quantity on the southern slope and in the 
central north, but the archsean rocks of the main part 
of the country are not very promising otherwise. In 
the notheast are recent rocks of more hopeful aspect, 
occupying an area remarkably described by Reginald 
Daly, in Dr. Grenfell's " Labrador." Better oppor- 
tunities for prospecting on the western side will follow 
the building of the Hudson's Bay railroad from Mani- 
toba. 

The ultimate future of the semi-barrens, which 
stretch away from the middle country to Ungava and 
the polar north, may be as pasture ground for domesti- 
cated reindeer, in the hands of some northern nomadic 
race — perhaps Lapps or the present Eskimo-white 
strain of the shores. Meanwhile the one product of 
the interior, not to be wholly superseded even if miner- 
als are found, is fur, which will not soon fail. This 
is its only yield to the world. Most other regions of 
earth left to the hunter races are being fast invaded; 




A GAME PASS. BEAR AND CARIBOU PATH AT MISTASTIN HEADLAND 



Labrador 5 

they are more amenable to modern purpose, their 
borders are approachable the year around. But iso- 
lated Labrador, avoided to this day in the great west- 
ward march of civilization, may yet be known as the 
" last of the fur countries." 

Whatever its economic future, the invitation of the 
country to the wilderness traveler, the traveler with a 
taste for unworn places, is unusual. Nowhere are 
such clear, unfished rivers, mapped and unmapped, 
large rivers and small; nowhere are such white-moss 
hills as those of the semi-barrens, velvet to the feet 
and fair to the eye. More than all are the lakes. Its 
lakes are Labrador's glory. Wide over the plateau 
they spread, along the watersheds and in the higher 
valleys. Nowhere are such lakes, — from the tiny 
" flashets " of the Newfoundlanders, their mission only 
to reflect the sky, to great Michikamau and Mistassini, 
with their far water horizons. Lake Mistassini, the 
largest, is a hundred miles long. 

Nor is it easy in this day to find the primitive hunter 
life as unchanged over a large country as in Labrador. 
Over their great territory the people still wander at 
will, knowing no alien restraint, no law but their own. 
The unwritten code of the lodge and open, the ancient 
beliefs, still prevail. 

Not a few districts of Labrador are as yet unex- 
plored. None of them is very large unless in the far 
Northwest, but particularly in the central area and the 
northern half of the peninsula generally, there is fresh 
ground for the seasonal visitor, the minor explorer, for 
a long time to come. It is true that some of these 
regions are not easy of access, for the rivers are strong 
and the distances great, but there remain good regions 



6 Labrador 

which are near and accessible. It may be taken that 
no white man has ever crossed the country from side 
to side. The journey would be one of near a thousand 
miles, as one would go. Yet, inaccurately enough, sev- 
eral of us who go into the country are announced to 
have " crossed Labrador." So with Mrs. Hubbard, 
and Dillon Wallace, and Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Tasker 
and myself. Corners of it some of us have crossed, but 
in trips not exceeding half the width of the main penin- 
sula. There is a difference between being two or three 
hundred miles from a base and five. 

Before the time of Low, whose report came out in 
1896, it was difficult to get much information about 
the country, particularly the middle and northern parts. 
There was not much trouble about the southern slope 
to a distance east of the Moisie, for the main rivers 
had been more or less mapped. But the most interest- 
ing parts of these rivers, the upper headwaters and 
lakes of their watersheds, had been left untouched. In 
the southwest, however, on the Saguenay branches, and 
on the Outardes and Maniquagan, surveys had reached 
well to the heights of land. 

There had been some other observations by good 
observers, though lacking instruments of precision. 
One of the best known of these explorations was by 
Henry Youle Hind, in the early sixties. He saw the 
fire-swept country about the head of the Moisie, and 
was impressed by its desolation. " Words," he wrote, 
" fail to describe the awful desolation of the Labrador 
tableland." Hind had imagination beyond most Labra- 
dor travelers, and his gatherings about the Indians, 
who naturally attracted him, show unusual illumination. 
At that time they were being forced from the ruined 



Labrador 7 

plateau to the Gulf shores, to perish untimely from the 
damp climate and unaccustomed diseases. Hind's book 
was long the standard upon Labrador, and is still inter- 
esting. 

The lower Hamilton was visited in 1887 by Mr. R. F. 
Holmes, who brought away a good sketch map of the 
river as far as Lake Winikapau. His objective had 
been the Grand Falls, then assumed to drop sheer from 
the plateau level of near two thousand feet elevation 
to the level of the sea. Deficiencies of equipment 
caused his early return. The falls are really a little 
more than three hundred feet high. 

In 1 89 1 Gary and Cole of Bowdoin College reached 
the falls, two hunderd and fifty miles above tidewater, 
and were followed closely by Henry G. Bryant and 
Arthur Keniston, the first to measure them. While 
Gary and Cole were away from their boat at the falls 
it caught fire and burned, and they were left to make 
their way back by a serious foot-and-raft trip to the 
coast. Dr. Low happened to be at Northwest River 
Post when they came out, looking the hard experience 
they had had. They came swimming across the river, 
some two miles wide, on a log, in the remnants of their 
clothes. Low afterward told Stuart Cotter, a Hudson's 
Bay Company friend, that the unconcerned way in 
which they took the whole matter was extraordinary. 

In the northeast occurred the journeys of John 
McLean, about 1840. From Fort Chimo, on Ungava 
Bay, he followed the Indian route to Michikamau, 
thence descending past the Grand Falls to Hamilton 
Inlet. In 1838 he made a notable winter walk from 
Chimo to Northwest River, some six hundred miles, 
following Northwest River itself for part of its course, 



8 Labrador 

and returning by much the same route. The stark life- 
lessness of the country at times was much the same then 
as now. — " We saw no game," was his significant re- 
mark regarding the return trip. It is unwritten history 
that fifty miles from Chimo the party gave out and were 
saved the fate of Hubbard, who in recent years met 
his end by starvation on the same route, only by the 
efforts of an Indian, who had strength to force his 
way to the post and send back relief. The parallel 
with the case of Hubbard is singularly near, and quite 
identical as regards the rescue of his companion, 
Wallace. A white man of each party was saved by 
the devotion and endurance of an Indian. The occur- 
rences were sixty-seven years apart. As to McLean's 
discovery of the Grand Falls, there is no reasonable 
doubt that they were visited some years before his time 
by David Dixon, or Dickson, a trader. This was told 
me by his grandson, whose name is Hewitt, and who 
now lives in Boston. 

One more notable journey was made during the later 
period, that of Father Lacasse, who travelled with 
Indians in 1875 o^ 1876 from Northwest River Post 
to Chimo over substantially the same route, as far as 
Michikamau, followed by Dillon Wallace in 1905. 

These explorers belonged to quite a recent time ; 
their period is the modern one of much writing, of 
reports and books and magazines ; therefore we all 
know them. But it would not do to take their part as 
being more than a small proportion of the white man's 
wanderings that went on in the peninsula previous to 
the time of Low, Traders and Jesuit missionaries and 
their successors the Oblate Fathers, and before all if not 
through all the old Coureurs des Bois, traveled and 



Labrador 9 

drifted with the Indians from the very beginnings of 
the early French period. Of most of their wanderings, 
as of their experiences, no record exists. They always 
traveled with Indians, and the network of Indian routes 
extends to Ungava and the treeless north. 

Little less neg'ligible for present purposes were the 
voyagings of Hudson's Bay Company people during 
the long period when inland posts were maintained, for 
the employees of the company were enjoined to silence 
about the country, and whatever records they made 
are not available. Now the only remaining post of 
the company in the main interior is at Nichicun, near 
the geographical center and apex of the peninsula, and 
few, if any, of the Hudson's Bay Company officers at 
the shores are qualified to undertake inland travel. 
The title of Inland Man is all but extinct. 

Such was the position of exploration to the early 
nineties. Until then the maps of the main part of the 
country showed few dependable features. Some of 
the principal lakes were laid down, usually wrong in 
place, shape, and size, and often in drainage. Like- 
wise certain of the larger rivers, known by their estu- 
aries at the coasts, were almost an equal credit to the 
draughtsman's imagination, and a firm range or two 
of mountains was apt to be thrown in. There was 
some foundation of report for most of the features 
shown, but to any one planning to travel in the country 
the maps would as well have been left blank. 

Chiefly in the early nineties came the real surveys 
of Low, to whose methods of accuracy the main table- 
land was as a clean page. The wide-spaced gridiron 
of his travel routes is shown on his well-known map 
of 1896. His notable journey from Lake St. John to 



10 Labrador 

Chimo by Mistassini, Nichicun, Kaniapishkau, and the 
Koksoak remains the only diametrical crossing of the 
country to this time. The pace had to be unremitting, 
rainy days and Sundays alike, and the expedition only 
just caught the Hudson's Bay Company steamer in the 
fall, on its way south. The voyageurs of his principal 
expeditions were not Indians of the regions visited, 
but Montagnais from Lake St. John. Transported 
provisions were depended upon to the high level, where 
fish netted in the lakes considerably took their place. 
It is to be noted that in the interminable water courses 
of the central area local guides were absolutely neces- 
sary to his effective progress. As one of his Indians 
told me in later years, with a ring of appreciation, " We 
always had a guide ! " For the want of one, in a 
later year. Low had to give up going from Lake Nao- 
kokan to Nichicun, only a few miles' distance. He 
was several days trying to find the outlet of Noakokan, 
the lake being large and masked by islands, and finally 
gave up and returned down the Maniquagan which 
he had just ascended. He was short of provisions, 
else he would of course have made his way through, 
a matter only of a little more time. Afterward he 
learned that the outlet was very close to the inlet by 
which he had entered the lake. In the matter of sup- 
plies a remark of his in Dr. Grenfell's "Labrador" 
is worth remembering: "A good supply of provi- 
sions means good-natured canoe men, willing to go any- 
where without a thought of danger, whereas the suspi- 
cion of starvation will change the same men into a dis- 
contented, mutinous crew." 

The most important work done since Low's return 
is Mrs. Hubbard's exploration of Northwest River, 



Labrador 11 

while scarcely less to be appreciated is her good travel 
map of George River. A later journey made by Mr, 
and Mrs. Stephen Tasker from Richmond Gulf to 
Chimo, a distance of nearly five hundred miles, re- 
quired perhaps as much hardihood as any that could 
be named, being a single-canoe voyage in a nearly game- 
less country, the men of the party shadowed, more- 
over, by responsibility for the safety of the woman 
passenger. The voyageurs were George Elson and 
Job Chapies, men to whom much of Mrs. Hubbard's 
success in 1905 had been due. 

After the completion of Low's work it was my 
fortune to fall upon some of his old voyageurs at 
Lake St. John, one of whom was John Bastian, a 
Scotch Montagnais now near Murray Bay. He was 
one of my two companions, in 1899, during a mid- 
winter walk to Mistassini Lake, on Rupert River, the 
third member of the party being Robert Richards, a 
Scotch Cree from Hudson's Bay, and a remarkable man. 
He has died lately near the Saguenay River. John, 
the principal guide, spoke little English then, but a good 
deal of evening talk went on concerning the interior 
and I came into quite a little light on the country and 
people, including the Naskapi of the North, besides get- 
ting together a small stock of Montagnais words. The 
trip was my beginning in the Indian North. 

Our falling together as a party, the two Indians and 
I, was a chance happening, yet if only from events 
which might be taken as in sequence, and in some sort 
affecting various lives, the occurrence might well have 
been ordered and meant to be. That initial trip was 
favored in all respects, and though others followed in 
which one or both of these men took part, up many 



12 Labrador 

rivers and over many heights of land, we always looked 
back to our first venture together as in a light of its 
own. In a sort it was a first experience for us all, 
white and Indian; we saw with the same eyes, and 
passed into a relation which none of us had expected. 
By the time I shifted to fresh ground in the far 
northeast, and again needed their help, both men had 
positions as guardians of club territories, and I did not 
try to unsettle them. Some vicissitudes would have 
been spared me if I had, and as the world has gone 
with them their fortunes might have come out much 
the same. At any rate this narrative, largely that of 
a good deal of half -solitary wandering, would have had 
a different face. 



|i!l]f 




WAITING FOR FISH 




r 



HAULING A TRAP 



CHAPTER II 

NEWFOUNDLAND 

The Atlantic Labrador, Labrador North, begins at 
the Straits of Belle Isle. There are two ways to get 
there, one by Bay of Islands on the west side of New- 
foundland, the other by St. John's on the east side, 
and either of these points of approach can be reached 
mainly by rail. A long canoe, however, such as I 
took in 1903, is an awkward piece of baggage on a 
broken railroad journey, and not caring to stand by 
at day and night junctions to keep it from being left, 
I held to the sea route throughout, I left Boston on 
the Plant Line Olivette, the 20th of June. There was 
a change at Halifax to the Red Cross Sylvia, with a 
day or two of waiting, then a run of some hours to St. 
John's, and the rest of the voyage to Cape Harrigan, 
nearly a thousand miles as one goes, fell with the Labra- 
dor mailboat. 

I had it in mind to see the coast at least, and form 
an idea of what could be done at some future time in 
the way of a trip inland. This might be all that was 
practicable on a first random visit. But what I was 
really hoping for was to get into touch with Indians of 
the Northeast, the primitive Naskapi of George River. 

My old southern slope men had told of them, with a 
touch of the superiority those with white blood are apt 
to feel, as wild and unchanged. Also Low, in his last 

13 



14 Labrador 

report, had mentioned them; according to him they 
hved about the large Indian House Lake on the upper 
George, depended almost wholly upon the caribou, 
rarely visited the shore, and were more independent of 
outside resources than any other Indians of the penin- 
sula. Some of them came to a grown-up age without 
ever seeing the shores. By Low's account the short, 
rapid rivers of the eastern slope were unnavigable, and 
the Indians came out to the Atlantic only in winter, a 
few of the young men hauling furs on long, narrow 
sleds and hastening back with the few articles that they 
cared to trade for, 

Indian House Lake itself had long seemed to me the 
most promising objective for a summer trip in the 
whole peninsula. It was unexplored, being indicated 
on the map only in conjectural dotted lines. It was 
large, fifty or sixty miles long and a good many wide, 
and aside from its distinction as a last retreat of the 
primitive hunter, it lay in the heart of the northeast 
range of the barren-ground caribou, and well within 
the borders of the elsewhere inaccessible subarctic bar- 
rens. Here the great zone of the barren grounds, 
the reindeer north, extending from the Atlantic to 
Behring Straits, can be reached by the convenient 
Labrador mailboat, which sails fortnightly from St. 
John's; and the step from ship to shore places one on 
the very verge of the little-known plateau. 

For a good many years previous to the winter of 
1903 it had appeared to me likely that a foot trip could 
be made from the coast to the middle George, but there 
seemed no way to be sure of this without making a 
visit to the coast, and the fact that the Indians found 
the country too hard for summer travel gave my specu- 



Newfoundland 15 

lations a real basis of doubt. If, early in 1903, I had 
not fallen in with Dr. Grenfell in Boston, it is possible 
that I should never have staked anything like a whole 
summer vacation on the doubtful chance of getting at 
the Indians, still less on the finding worth while a 
mere visit to the coast without seeing them. But to 
my surprise and extreme interest Dr. Grenfell told me 
that he had seen Naskapi at Davis Inlet in summer, 
even treating some of them professionally (" veterinary 
surgery " he called it, not being able to talk with his 
patients) and he insisted, against my objections, that 
they had some habit of coming out in summer, though 
by what means he knew not. If I would go by the 
mailboat to Fanny's Harbor at Cape Harrigan, his 
friend, Tom Spracklin, would put me across to the 
Hudson's Bay post in Davis Inlet. This was enough ; 
as summer came on I got together enough of an outfit 
to avoid being helpless after leaving the steamer, and 
departed for St. John's in time to get the first mail- 
boat of the season. The venture was only a recon- 
noissance, I had no safe plans beyond getting eyes on 
the coast. 

Halifax — quiet, seafaring, much fortified Halifax 
— is a comfortable place to wait. The old red-coated 
British garrison is gone, much regretted, but its works 
remain. The modern change in warfare is here plain 
to the eye. The imposing but grass-grown citadel on 
the hill, enormously costly in its day, is out of the 
reckoning. At the present time the real defense lies 
with certain inconspicuous moundy places far down the 
harbor, with fev/ or no guns in sight. So also with the 
defenses of Quebec and its obsolete citadel, which I 
have been told cost thirty millions sterling. Yet if. 



16 Labrador 

however, as an officer once related, it saved Canada to 
the flag, the account may have balanced. At Hali- 
fax I bought an old relic of a greenheart salmon rod, 
but all the better for the many salmon it had fought, 
for three dollars. 

While we of the Olivette were coming down on 
summer seas from Boston, the Sylvia from New York 
had been creeping on behind us in heavy weather. 
On the bridge, when she came in at last, was Leonidas 
Hubbard, Jr., with Mrs. Hubbard, George Elson, and 
Dillon Wallace, also on their way north. I had known 
they were coming, but they were surprised at seeing 
me. If Mrs. Hubbard, pale from the rough passage, 
had been told at just that time what her career was yet 
to be on salt and fresh water she would doubtless have 
been very unresponsive. But once on terra firma she 
forgot the past, and we all wandered the town together 
while cargo matters were going on. 

In time we were off, our two Oldtown canoes, twin 
craft, side by side on the deckhouse. They were 
eighteen feet by thirty-three inches by twelve inches 
deep. Hubbard's weighed eighty pounds, mine ninety- 
one. The unusual weight of mine gave me sore 
thoughts, going alone as I was ; the boat had been 
ordered in Boston at about sixty-five pounds, and came 
from the factory too late to be changed. 

In the two weeks before we reached Hamilton Inlet 
we talked plans to rags, discussing at times whether I 
should join the others on their Northwest River ven- 
ture. With more time I should have done so. I feared 
that they would even have to winter on the ice-bound 
coast, as indeed they did. Their chances would natur- 
ally have been better if I had gone along, if only be- 



THE CAPE RACE COAST 




A SMALL BERG 



Newfoundland 17 

cause a second canoe would have given more room for 
more supplies. As to going with them for merely the 
first of their trip, which was discussed, I should share 
only the heavy up-hill stage of the journey without see- 
ing much that would be worth while, and perhaps have 
to come back alone over long portages with my heavy 
canoe. I should get most of the bad and little of the 
good. The lower part of the larger Labrador rivers 
is usually uninteresting, while the first heavy-loaded 
weeks of such trips with their frequent portages are apt 
to be of a back-breaking sort and only justified by what 
follows in the easier waters of the level plateau beyond. 
On the other hand, Hubbard was not quite willing to 
go on with me to the northern coast. This would be 
risking his season's opportunity on rather poor chances, 
uncertain as the practicability of getting into the in- 
terior from that side appeared then. 

For more than a day from Halifax it was foggy, and 
by the time it cleared we were well into the great fish- 
ing waters under Newfoundland. Here, it may be 
said, the North begins. The air loses its sea languor, 
the water looks paler and colder ; the craft are open fish- 
ing boats, the seabirds plainly northern. The change 
of latitude, as we fared toward Cape Race, was plain. 
Whether it was the many boats with their two tanned 
sails that most appealed to us — boats of fishermen 
sawing endlessly with long arms, " jigging " for cod 
in the early dawn — or the larger strange birds that 
wheeled about or skimmed the smooth swell, it would 
be hard to say. Slanting low over the bow flew a 
large, uncanny bird, with no head or eyes distinguish- 
able, merely a sharpened spindle in body, — black, or 
nearly black above, white below, from end to end. 



18 Labrador 

" Two wings on a mackerel," sang quick Dr. C, who 
was standing with us, and the simile was fair. It may 
have been a Greater Shearwater. Proper birds, such 
as ducks and gulls, have necks and heads, or at least 
eyes and a visible beak. 

The cliffs along by Cape Race, the southeastern 
corner of Newfoundland, are not very imposing from 
a few miles away, though high enough when near. 
Deep water comes to their very foot. Before the 
present lighthouse was built the place was one of the 
dreaded spots of the sea, with a sad history of wrecks 
upon its uncompromising shores. The great ocean 
pathways are near. Such was the set of currents at 
certain junctures of wind and tide that in time of storm 
and darkness a passing ship was carried almost certainly 
into the grip of that iron-bound lee. No skill of the 
mariner availed ; lead and line showed no shallowing, 
the log gave no reckoning of the drift. Without warn- 
ing came the breakers and the fateful cliffs — by many 
a ghast lookout seen all to late. 

In the placid dawn a few fragments of ice floated 
wide set over the silver. The level of the surface 
seemed lifted above the seas we had left, the impres- 
sion of high latitude was remarkable. We were, in 
fact, in arctic water, the eddy and edge of the polar 
stream. The sun was still far below the horizon in the 
northeast, passing imperceptibly around ; it was hard 
to believe that it would ever reach the sky line. 

As we bore around the land there opened up, three 
or four miles away, our first unmistakable polar ice. 
It was only a bluish, irregular boulder of one or two 
thousand tons, touched by the east light, but one who 
grew up under the spell of Kane and Perry and Frank- 



Newfoundland 19 

lin sees with almost unbelieving eyes such a messenger 
from the real Arctic. We were come upon the actual 
polar world. Where this worn berg first yielded to the 
stream the north star was high to the zenith. Men in 
skins, perhaps, had seen it slowly pass ; the wheeling 
burgomaster; the walrus and white bear on the mov- 
ing floes. 

Further on, a fine cleft berg appeared close to east- 
ward, and more bergs during the few miles to St. John's. 
The greater bergs stood near the narrow entrance to 
the harbor, a grand barricading fleet. This entrance 
is scarcely distinguishable from outside. When I asked 
Captain Farrel if he could go in at night or had to 
wait outside, he said with a turn of the thumb toward 
the tall bergs seaward, " We have to go in ! Better 
than to bum around in that stuff! " So it might be, 
but it looked a hard choice. 

St. John's is the portal of the north Atlantic, and 
lives by its prey from the sea. Countless cargoes of 
cod have come through its narrow gate since Jacques 
Cartier, in 1534, found the Basque ships established 
there. Countless have been the seals, and the stream 
of salmon and sea trout and the furs and skins of the 
North has never stayed. Now the sealing is not done 
by schooners but steam sealers. Small, strong, with 
sloping bows to bear down the ice, they lie idle from 
spring to spring, bunched in twos, threes, and fours 
along the east side of the harbor. The city is on the 
west side, stepping up on wide slopes. Its buildings 
are wooden, to an extent, and not old, being replace- 
ments after the great fires of recent times. 

Now we were to learn something of the way of 
northern mailboats, the way of steamers in ice-bearing 



20 Labrador 

seas. The Labrador boat, it appeared, might be back 
from north in a week, or she might not, depending on 
the ice — not the weather, but the ice. At TiU Cove, 
two days north, she would be reported by telegraph, 
we would be notified if we were near. We need 
not engage staterooms in advance, there would be 
room. 

There was nothing for it but to go fishing. There 
seemed not very much else to do. On a holiday just 
then eight hundred people were said to have gone out 
by railroad for trout. By rail we went to "VVhitbourne, 
some way out, then down the Broad Cove branch ten 
miles as best we could; there was no train that day. 
Mrs. Hubbard drove with the luggage, the rest walked. 
We camped at Broad Cove, near the telegraph, among 
many shallow ponds. The country was burnt and deso- 
late. Many kinds of gulls were about, with little obvi- 
ous occupation but to excercise their remarkable 
breeding-time vocabulary. A cackling note prevailed; 
almost all were weird or discordant. They may be 
love notes, but — ! Early one morning we were waked 
as one person by the broken squawks of some large 
afifair that flew close over. Elson was sure it had a 
very bad pain. It may have been a gannet, if they 
commit such disturbances. These cries, over the deso- 
late region, were disquieting to the ear, a little as of the 
underworld, and according too well with the rocky 
burnt waste. 

The streams were low and sea trout had not come up. 
There were yellow-bellied trout in the ponds, some- 
times with black parasitic spots, these apparently due to 
the low state of the ponds. We caught fish enough for 
our uses, mostly from quarter to half pounders, or less. 



Newfotmdland 21 

They were what the St. John trouters call mud trout, 
which curiously is their most complimentary term. 
" They were real mud trout ! " a fisherman would say 
in climax, when describing his catch. In truth they 
were the best, as far from a " muddy " tasting trout as 
possible. I suspect them of being a distinct variety, 
these yellow-bellied trout of the shallow, black-bottomed 
ponds, perhaps the Marston trout. 

In occasionally high, black-bottomed ponds in north- 
ern New Hampshire and Maine occurs the striking 
phase of the fontinalis best known as the red-bellied 
trout. In Maine it appears in some ponds of size 
and depth. Further north it is more common and less 
restricted to special waters. In Newfoundland it is 
almost everywhere, passing, as it does along the Straits 
of Belle Isle, under the somewhat unfortunate name 
of mud trout. It grows as large as any fontinalis. 

The visible marks are red or yellow red under- 
neath at least from the vent back, deep compressed 
body, brilliant coloring but so dark on the back as to 
considerably mask the vermiculations. The general 
color scheme of the fish is that of the ordinary phase 
at spawning time. In fish of a half to one or two 
pounds the flesh is intensely red, more so than any 
salmon. When two fish are separated aftert being 
laid together for a little this red color shines strongly 
through the skin. 

As the spawning season comes on the coloration 
deepens to rich old mahogany, such as I have seen in 
wonderfully deep fish on headwaters of the Peribonka. 
They were correspondingly flatsided and narrow when 
seen from above. They were strange to see, and 
haunting to this day in their rich magnificence. De- 



22 Labrador 

liberately they took a sunk fly in still black eddies 
among the shore rocks, while a yard or two away in 
a delirious bubbling rush ouanananiche were taking 
the same fly at a dart. I made the mistake here of 
saving the trout rather than the latter. They were 
not very good, and I find the common opinion against 
them, as compared with other trout, when caught in 
the spawning season. Earlier they are the better of 
the two. 

For some years the question was in my mind whether 
this trout was not a distinct species, not so much from 
its appearance as its traits, and its remarkable food 
quality. For one thing, when in running water, as it is 
in summer its size is eight or nine inches long, and it 
is distinctly a nipper, where the usual trout opens its 
mouth wide to the fly. One casts and casts with not 
much but nips. The fly seems too large but a smaller 
one does no better. A person used to the fish could 
tell with his eyes shut which kind of trout was rising 
after four or five nips. 

The extreme opposite of the red phase is the silvery 
trout having access to salt water. Near tidewater 
on Eskimo the latter was taking a surface fly with 
hard rushes in current, while some reds were taking 
in their own way in the still part of the pool along- 
side. The contrast between the tearing, never-giving- 
up sea trout and slow under water takers who bored 
about in three feet of water like a namayaish, and 
pulled little, was striking. 

These reds were about thirteen inches long, intensely 
red meated and rich. Northern opinion counts this 
variety the best of their trout. All in all the list of 
peculiarities of the phase is pretty complete, it is a 



Newfoundland 23 

full " fisherman's species," as any who know it will 
testify. 

One of its odd ways is to perch indefinitely on a 
boulder, propped up on his fore fins as if something 
was the matter with him. Apparently he is there only 
to keep off the mud bottom, at any rate a bait dropped 
■ through a hole in the ice is taken smartly enough. A 
snappy way is characteristic of the small fish when 
summering in running water. They are strong little 
fighters then, and have wit enough to turn easily shy 
after a few have been caught. 

Specimens sent to Garman and to Kendall at dif- 
ferent times made the fish a fontinalis, and the return 
by Agassiz on a Maine fish, as " a simon-pure brook 
trout " almost certainly relates to the present fish. It 
is a habit phase. To theorize a little, its red under- 
sides may be laid to its bottom-feeding habit. Some 
other bottom-feeding trouts have the same mark, while 
surface-feeders in the same water have not. The gen- 
eral dark coloration merely harmonizes with its pre- 
vailing background. The cause of the peculiarly in- 
tense red of its flesh is not so obvious, but I have come 
to associate it with a diet of bottom organisms, maybe 
Crustacea. I once saw one's mode of feeding, in only 
a foot of air-clear water, almost certainly on its usual 
food. A small stick six or eight inches long and the 
size of a basket willow, slanted from the bottom to a 
height of some two inches above it. The fish began 
at the high end, tipped himself a little to be at right 
angles with the stick, and nibbled conscientiously the 
length of it exactly as a boy would nibble along a 
twig of birch. This was his ordinary way, one would 
assume, of getting his living. 



24s Labrador 

Obviously the deep shape, with trout as with other 
creatures, goes with a comparatively inactive life, in 
this case a still-water life without much exercise in 
chasing prey; and the flat sides, want of side-muscles 
and correspondingly weak pulling powers point to the 
same cause. The rest, the slow, deep taking of the 
fly, the laying on of fat and the stall-fed delicacy that 
is, harmonize with the usual life of the fish, with its 
relative quiet and special food. 

Whether the bottom diet concerned requires cold 
water for its existence I do not know. There seems 
a hint in the increasing abundance of lower forms, 
plankton, as one goes from warm seas to the Arctic. 
Or it may be that shallow home ponds have the trout 
food but are too warm for the fish, excepting at the 
high elevations where we find it. In lower Gulf waters 
the present trout comes to the head of tide, but either 
loses his coloration rapidly when there, or does not 
often go farther. 

We had a good time of it. The Hubbards had a 
tent on one side of the railroad bank and the rest of 
us on the other. We scattered about the different 
ponds. Aside from the gulls there was nothing un- 
usual in the way of wild life. Some geese bred in the 
region, Wallace saw an otter, and there were loons, also 
beaver — somewhere. In a few days a message came 
from the Reid Company, and the party divided, some 
for Harbor Grace, which was very near, the others to 
see the baggage aboard at St. John's. 

We were off toward night July 2 or 3, with fog, but 
made Harbor Grace in two or three hours, where many 
passengers came on. In the cabin, with five staterooms 
and a small ladies' saloon, there were twenty- four 




o 

pq 
< 

w 

H 
H 
< 
pq 

O 



Newfoundland 25 

persons, and we now had light on the steamer's infor- 
mation bureau. What we had heard was obviously 
true; there was no need of engaging staterooms, for 
no more than a berth apiece could possibly be held in 
the pressure of such numbers, and we did get the berth. 
It would have been a hardy individual who would have 
attempted to play dog in the manger with a whole state- 
room. There was of course a good deal of camping 
about in chance places, and small ventilation. 

For days it was foggy and little above freezing, with 
a sea and growing wind from northeast. There was 
no place to be warm. On deck the vicious air went 
to my bones, and below it was chilly too, with bad air. 
The Newfoundlanders took it well, standing uncon- 
cerned about the open deck by the hour while I was 
seeking the sheltered places and was never comfortable. 
It was a bit mortifying to find myself so distinctly 
inferior, though these people were younger and seemed 
an unusually burly lot. But after a day or two, happen- 
ing to observe how one of my stateroom mates was 
dressed, I saw a light. Getting to my kit I put on all 
the clothes I had along, beginning with two good suits 
of winter underclothes and ending with the usual over- 
coat. Coming on deck, burly with the rest, I shivered 
no more. 

Not many gulls appeared, but beds of shearwaters, 
locally " hagdowns," and other kinds, stretched along 
on both sides at times, and single birds skimmed the 
waves rapidly with their pointed wings. They are 
never seen on land here, though their season on the 
coast is the natural breeding time of all the other sea- 
birds. It used to be thought here that they managed 
to lay their eggs on the water, as swallows have been 



26 Labrador 

thought to winter in the mud at home. Their breeding 
place is now known to be in the far Antarctic. They 
are sea travelers indeed. 

Ice was visible at all times, save in close fog. The 
navigation in such weather involved much more than 
familiarity with the coast, and the working from port 
to port up the coast, in and out and away in the fog 
and moving ice and at times among islands and shoals, 
was an inspiring feat to see. The voyage requires a 
native seamanship beyond all taught navigation. 
Eighteen feet the steamer drew. There are not many 
men who could take a deep craft the thousand miles 
north and back, with fifty stops each way, often in 
tight little harbors, and not take bottom somewhere 
along the way. Beyond the Straits of Belle Isle the 
charts are of httle use; beyond Hamilton Inlet there is 
practically no chart. Even if there were, the innumer- 
able passages would be confusing in fog, and the mov- 
ing ice islands of the open deeps are beyond all chart- 
ing. The weather may be foggy a third of the time, 
as average runs go. Sometimes the tide currents foil 
the log, then the vessel creeps and the lead is used. 
Perhaps the anchor goes down. Or a blast of the 
whistle may bring an echo from some known cliff, far 
or near, and the place of the ship located. Sometimes 
the short blast comes back instantly, R-r-rhatt! like an 
angry blow, from the face of a berg just beyond sight 
in the fog, and the screw reverses. In a dense, brilliant 
fog, lying low, the blue sky may appear overhead for 
hours. Nothing of that year's trip was better worth 
while to me than seeing Captain Parsons take his ship 
north and back again, good weather and bad. Trip 
after trip he does it, year after year. 



Newfoundland 27 

The old Virginia Lake was a sealer, not comfortable 
and not very clean. She was lost in the spring sealing 
of 1908, crushed by the ice. Now the larger Inver- 
more, with her luxury of cleanness and space, has taken 
her place, and one travels more comfortably now than 
from Boston to Halifax. The old boat was apt to be 
inhumanly crowded at times, with no reckoning of the 
impossible second cabin. Four persons in a very small 
stateroom was the rule, generally with the port closed! 

Tilt Cove was the last of our five or six stops- on the 
island, then with thick weather and a strong 'sea the 
captain headed wide to the northeast for many hours, 
past the straits, finally turning west to feel for the main- 
land. Toward night a long liner or cattleboat slipped 
across our bows, ghostly in the mist, and it was re- 
marked that we were off the straits, for the stranger 
must be making for them. The passengers were 
largely skippers, going to their fishing stations. Al- 
though they were all familiar with the coast and could 
take a schooner almost anywhere upon it, none of 
them paid any attention to the log over the stern or 
noted the courses. It was not expected of them. I 
had been doing this very thing, thoughtlessly, going 
often to the log with my pocket compass, but I became 
conscious from the reserve of the skippers that it was 
a breach of etiquette; Parsons winced a little at first, 
but in such matters he was as easy a man as ever 
walked a bridge. In the end he offered me his charts, 
and I got a living idea of the way his game — surely 
a man's game — was played. 

We overreached to the north a little, as was meant 
to be, and the guesses of the skippers when we came 
upon the high Labrador shore were mostly for Spear 



28 Labrador 

Harbor, a little north of Battle Harbor, and as I re- 
member they were right, even in the fog. Battle was 
not far back . 

Here Mrs. Hubbard left, to return south alone. The 
voyage in the small uneasy steamer had left her weak, 
and the desolation of the place, doubly forbidding in 
the gloomy northeaster, confirmed her depression at 
the parting with her husband. H this were the nearer 
Labrador, what would it be nearly a thousand miles 
farther north? Whether this was her thought it was 
almost an inevitable one ; it is certain that at the part- 
ing she expected never to see her husband's face again. 
They had been married only a year or two. In the 
months following she was hopeful, if not confident, 
but in the end the premonition of that evening at Battle 
was fulfilled. 



CHAPTER III 

THE ATLANTIC COAST 

Battle Harbor seems to have been named from the 
Portugeuse Batales, boats. From there to Hamilton 
Inlet, some hundred and fifty miles, are dozens of fish- 
ing stations. Among them the mailboat follows the 
winding passages with little outlook to the open sea. 
Wonderful are the deep, shut-in harbors, such as Punch- 
bowl and Square Harbor; not merely sheltered, but 
shut in by steep, rugged hills. There are no wharves 
anywhere; the ship's boat goes ashore and shore boats 
come alongside, these chiefly to see the doctor. Few 
come when fish are plenty; there is no time for ailing 
then, but when there are no fish the doctoring takes 
long, it seems as if the steamer would never get away. 
Dr. Boyle turned none away, nor hurried; day and 
night he was rowed to shore cases whenever called, 
sometimes a distance of miles. Bad teeth were com- 
mon; many with tied-up, swollen faces came aboard, 
sometimes to roar most lustily under the forceps. 

Some of the crews of young men pulling about the 

harbors or coming in low with fish from the cod traps 

were not only handsomely built and of great rowing 

power but had a spring and reach which I had come 

never to expect in sea rowing. I believe that a crew 

could be found here which with proper shaping up 

29 



30 Labrador 

would win all races. They might go through a good 
deal of rowing gear at first. 

At that time the best of the employed people about 
the fishing, perhaps even the sharemen, found no fault 
if their season's work returned them $ioo all told. 
This was all, there was no winter work excepting odd 
jobs about, getting wood and the like, with a little net- 
making or boatbuilding which ordinarily brought no 
cash. Some men went to the mainland mines, how- 
ever, by the railroad. Latterly such resources, other 
than fishing, have increased, and with winter work a 
successful man may have an income of $200. With 
comparative prosperity the old unfortunate credit 
system began to decline, and the efforts of Dr. Grenfell 
on the coasts about the straits have hastened the same 
economic end. During the period from 1903 to 1909 
many small schooners were built by fishermen formerly 
on wages, the price of fish being high, and many did 
extremely well, as things go in the island. 

From Battle Harbor to Port Manvers, more than 
five hundred miles, almost all the coast is masked by 
islands which extend out from five to twenty miles in 
something like an archipelago. The " runs " and pas- 
sages are " drowned valleys," formerly with running 
streams in them, for the coast was once higher than 
now. Generally the passages are deep, the water line 
being well up on the slopes of the former hillsides. 
These slopes of the present shores can generally be 
trusted to continue on down some way without change, 
and schooners bear on sail in unknown waters with a 
freedom astonishing to a stranger. Seventy or eighty 
feet of water is common in the harbors. Outside the 
islands the water may be shallower, the debris carried 



The Atlantic Coast 31 

out by the former glaciers from the inland ice-cap 
having levelled up the outer valleys. 

Coming from south the islands north of Battle look 
barren enough, but have after a'll a certain greenness, 
and even small trees and bushes in sheltered places. 
They are gardenlike in comparison with the gray rock 
hills farther north. Inland there is a good deal of 
forest. As we passed across some open bay a vista 
would open showing most invitingly the mountains and 
valleys of the inland country. Hubbard and I, much 
together, looked with lingering eyes upon the far 
sparsely forested hills. They were inviting hills to the 
feet, and save the fur hunters of the bays in winter no 
white man had traveled there. To our eyes it was the 
very unexplored land of our dreams. Again and again 
we said: " If we were only there! If we were only 
there, on those hills ! " 

At Indian Harbor we parted for the last time. 
The tragedy of the expedition is history now and needs 
no telling. A good deal of undue criticism has de- 
scended upon the means and doings of the party. 
They meant to ascend the large Northwest or Nas- 
caupee River, which discharges into Grand Lake at a 
distance of about two hundred miles from Indian 
Harbor, but missed it and took a smaller stream. 
They were traveling on the other side of the lake from 
Northwest River, the mouth of which is masked by 
an island, and as they had been told by local people 
that it was " at the end of the lake," they kept on 
accordingly and went up the lesser river which flows in 
at the end. 

The mistake of itself by no means involved disaster 
to life; in truth the water dangers, at least, of the large 



32 Labrador 

violent river they meant to ascend, would have been 
greater than in the streams they followed. They had 
a gill net, the most effective means of support in such 
a region, but it was somewhat worn and soon went to 
pieces. As to the outfit generally, I would willingly 
enter upon the same venture with what they had, but 
it would be necessary to have a good game year to get 
through to Ungava. The alternative would be re- 
treat. The party happened upon a bad game year, 
and were overtaken by early cold weather in a district 
where native Indians have starved under similiar cir- 
cumstances. It is to be noted that winter is the only 
starvation time in Labrador. They might well have 
turned back a little earlier than they did, but the main 
cause of disaster was their being wind bound for 
nearly two weeks while the running water behind 
them was becoming too cold for trout, which had left 
the riffles by the time they were on the home road. 
Starvation followed. Their " Windbound Lake " was 
not large, and fate alone could have brought about so 
unfortunate a happening as their being held there such 
a length of time. Not in a hundred seasons, it may 
be thought, would the same thing happen again. In 
lesser sort a certain ill fortune followed the party 
almost throughout, whatever their skill and judgment, 
as when one has bad cards through an evening though 
the mathematical chances may be a thousand to one 
against it. Small expeditions into uninhabited regions 
of this sort can only be entered upon on certain assump- 
tions, chief of which are that no one is to be ill, no one 
is to have a serious accident, and on the whole good 
luck is to attend' — better than average. Bad luck, 
especially if recurring, is inadmissible. Suppose 




WALLACE, HUBBARD, AND ELSON 




UNDERCUT ICE, FANNY'S HARBOR, JULY 22 



The Atlantic Coast 33 

George Elson had turned his ankle fifty miles out 
from Grand Lake on the return, or his lumbago had 
laid him out for a week — the whole party would have 
perished, almost surely. Suppose Carey and Cole, 
whose boat was burned two hundred and fifty miles 
up the Hamilton, had disabled an ankle. Suppose they 
had had any approach to a run of bad luck after the 
boat was lost. On the other hand, suppose that the 
Hubbard party had happened to turn back a few hours 
before they did, before the wind came up — which 
might just as well have been — they would all have 
come out at Grand Lake laughing, though with an 
appetite for something besides trout. In the matter 
of criticism let him who has lived as long as Hubbard 
did on a desolate country, who has kept as high spirit, 
cast the first stone! Most of us minor wanderers 
who have been many times out have to thank fortune 
rather than our wits that some unforgotten day or 
night was not our last. 

At Indian Harbor is Dr. Grenfeli's northernmost 
hospital, kept open only in summer. His work is 
appreciated by the fishermen, however his co-opera- 
tive stores are viewed by the traders. He represents 
the modern humanities on a coast where before they 
were peculiarly lacking. The medical side on the coast 
now, what with the strong staff of Dr. Grenfell, the 
regular doctor of the mailboat, and the year-round 
Moravians in the north, is fairly in hand. 

At Indian Harbor and about the outer Hamilton 
Inlet generally is a striking display of black, eruptive 
rock which has forced its way up through fissures in 
the whitish granite. The mainland has risen and 
settled in its long history, apparently with the going 



34 Labrador 

and coming of its ice-cap overload, not to reckon in 
its immense losses of rock material, these largely 
gained by the adjacent sea floor. 

In places the raised sea beaches are as much as three 
to four hundred feet above tide, yet the bottoms of 
the present drowned valleys are well below water. 
The fissures which have opened along the coastal line 
of weakness are visible from Belle Isle to at least five 
hundred miles north. The older ones are filled level 
with black trap, planed even with the granite by glacial 
wear. For miles, in places, the black bands may be 
seen stretching across the naked rock hills. The larger 
ones are apt to be weathered a little below the bare 
country rock, and the universal fertihty of weathered 
lavas is shown by the firm green mxoss which carpets 
the sunken strip, as does grass an old road. Where 
the fissure crosses a hill crest a squafe notch may appear 
on the sky line, cut down ten or twenty feet or forty 
feet wide. 

The old trap seams were filled with the molten up- 
flow at a time when the present level was blanketed by 
a great thickness of rock measures now ground away. 
The later movements, for everything is still in motion, 
are accompanied by the opening of " dry " seams, 
without the eruptive trap. So fresh and clean are the 
irregular walls of some of these newer fissures that 
one wonders if they have not moved a little over night. 
Occasionally the movement reopens an old trap seam, 
the black trap either sticking to one side or being wholly 
loose in blocks. Inland there is no sign of these fis- 
sures ; there the country rock is solid. 

The mailboat visits Rigolet, some hours up the Inlet, 
either going north or coming south. From the Hud- 



The Atlantic Coast 35 

son's Bay Company post there, the Mealy Mountains 
rise imposing in the southwest, looking fully two 
thousand feet high. The inland climate is warm in 
summer and there is a fair show of light spruce on 
the hills west. Among the trees, especially on high 
slopes, the caribou moss gives a distinct whitish ap- 
pearance to the ground. The unattractive adjective 
" mealy " doubtless came from this appearance, but 
the fine ranges deserve a more sounding name. Their 
Indian name also means whitish. 

From Hamilton Inlet north the shores are distinctly 
more desolate, but the water spaces among the islands 
are wider, and fine bays stretch away to the rivers of 
the mainland, where snow-streaked mountains appear 
somewhat back from the coast. Sometimes those 
mountains show^ fresh snow in midsummer, as in 
1908, when the ranges north of Hamilton were daz- 
zling white. 

Beyond Hamilton the fishing stations are fewer; 
and with the rising hills of Mokkovik and Aillik comes 
the Moravian Mission field and its sparse Eskimo popu- 
lation. All along from the Straits the bay people who 
came aboard showed traces of Eskimo descent. Every- 
where was a little of the blood, showing plainer to the 
north, as the days passed, until at the missions there 
appeared a good portion of the unmixed race. Hope- 
dale, a little north of Mokkovik, is one of the older 
stations, begun more than one hundred and forty years 
ago. 

Almost immemorial now to this strong breed of 
the shore is the devoted paternal hand which has saved 
them so long from extinction as a race. The work is 
less known and appreciated than it deserves. If mis^ 



36 Labrador 

sionaries anywhere are entitled to the crown of achive- 
ment in an obscure and desolate region it is these. 
Their families, as an example of peaceful living, dwell 
under the same roof at each of the stations, a test of 
the human relation which if only in the absence of 
outside diversions involves rare qualities. The house- 
hold work is reHeved by Eskimo servants, but the cook- 
ing not so. The way of Eskimo women is not the 
way of fastidious housewives, and save for some re- 
course to the white daughters of the bays the more 
intimate work of the household is done by the wives 
of the missionaries themselves. 

Such peoples as the Eskimo are ever children in the 
presence of advanced races. They are to be led when 
they can be led, restrained by a firm hand when for 
their good; it is for the worse that the means to this 
end are rarely ample. The influences of summer 
traders and of fishermen, who are generally traders 
too, must bring vexation to the Moravian path. Their 
chief support comes from England, where is the head 
of the order. A store is kept at each mission, but the 
mission proper receives nothing from it. The uncom- 
mercial nature of even the trading part of the establish- 
ment is shown by the fact that the balance for the year 
is usually a loss, to be made up by contributions from 
abroad. A set price is paid for fish; if the market 
falls below it the mission loses, and vice versa, but the 
people are saved uncertainty. 

The season was rather an early one, but snow in 
streaks and brgad patches showed frequently along 
the slopes through July. Pieces of shore ice drifted 
aground with wind and tide, and about sea and shore 
were fragments of fresh-water ice from bergs. To 



The Atlantic Coast 3T 

our unwonted eyes the luminous turquoise and azure 
of the thinner forms and underwashed caves were of 
almost startling beauty. One must see to reahze. 
Occasional massive bergs were grounded along the 
coast wherever the water was deep enough to let them 
in. Seven-eighths of their mass is under water. They 
are apt to have long projections, underwater capes or 
tables that cannot be seen in windy weather, and the 
steamer keeps well clear. It is told once a steamer 
was caught amidships by a rising tongue of ice, as a 
berg turned partly over, and raised bodily out of water. 
By one of those touches of luck that ice navigators 
have to have she tilted forward, slid off, and was able 
to go along. Summer bergs are rather well avoided. 
A captain would lose his rating if he went near a 
summer berg unnecessarily and anything happened. 
Parsons is careful about them; it is fairly safe to say 
he will never lose his rating, at least in that way. 

The bergs are dazzling in the sunshine. In a photo- 
graph, when taken near, water and sky are apt to come 
out almost black by contrast. One can scarcely give 
them little enough time. As the summer goes on they 
become opaque, dead white, in dull days, but a stab 
of the oar brings up on hard blue ice at the very sur- 
face. As they waste or lose fragments they change 
level, perhaps turn over, and the smooth, wave-washed 
band and groove of their old water line appears slant- 
ing at one angle or another with the water. One side 
of the berg, revolved up from long submergence in the 
warming sea, may be rounded and smooth, with many 
clear, blue veins ; these are regelated fissures opened in 
its progress down the uneven Greenland valleys. An- 
other face, lately rifted, may be of sharp crystalline 



38 Labrador 

fracture, texture such as only living crystals have. 
Indeed the bergs are gigantic crystalline masses, pure 
elemental separations, the like of which neither land 
nor sea has to show in any other form. 

Although, when close by, the tall walls and pinnacles 
of ice running up one or two hundred feet are wonder- 
fully imposing, the ice is most beautiful — and at 
times the tall ice comes near to being very beauty itself 
— when distance heightens the shadows and gives effect 
to its shape. Some bergs appear fragments of ele- 
mental structures, at least their squared blocks ; in 
some lingers the greater design, foundation, plinth, 
and shaft, and, indeed a little aslant, the icicled cornice. 
Man's architecture in all its forms is hinted at, and 
often the forms of living creatures, natural or gro- 
tesque, but the spirit of the ice is mainly architectural: 
the gods of the north had their temples, and these are 
their fragments. The bergs are nature's Greek phase. 

Yet, ice and all, the question whether Labrador is 
not the safest rock coast in the world to navigate is 
worth mentioning. This is not merely from its in- 
numerable shelter places and deep channels, ground 
out smooth by glaciers, but also in summer, from its 
usually moderate winds and smooth sea. A really 
heavy sea I have never observed north of Belle Isle, 
not such as one sees on home coasts. In this is com- 
pensation for having ice about, for bergs do a good deal 
toward breaking up the ocean swell. Although there 
may not be more than four or five bergs in sight at 
one time, from the steamer run, the polar stream is 
from one to two hundred miles wide, and somewhere, 
beyond sight, there are more and larger ones. The 
tops of some of them look to be a half mile long, — 



The Atlantic Coast 39 

majestic, slow-moving islands, showing just above the 
horizon. It is small ice that can come near the shore. 

What are the places, what the granite ways, where 
such great masses may be launched without breaking, 
may well be wondered. No matter how even are the 
slopes, the outer edge of the ice would naturally tend 
to float up, with tremendous force, as it became sub- 
merged. Upon all the glacial frontage of the long 
Greenland coast there must be few places where the 
greater ice islands can take the sea whole. Some one 
remarkable conjunction of slopes may yet appear where 
the thing can happen, the more reasonably that such 
bergs are not common. Yet, after all, the structural 
resistance of such bergs is not to be underrated. If 
floating two or three hundred feet above water their 
total height would be near two thousand feet, and their 
cross section nearly square. The great tables of the 
Antarctic, larger than any of the north, launch them- 
selves successfully in great numbers. Such marvelous 
debouchements into deep water as prevail in Greenland 
occur nowhere else in the northern hemisphere. The 
great Alaskan glaciers discharge into shallow water 
on the submerged continental shelf. There is no tall 
ice on that coast. 

With all the thousands of schooners that visit the 
coast, and many larger craft, life is seldom lost by 
drowning. For one thing, so favorable are the slopes 
that a craft is likely to drive actually ashore and permit 
one to get out. Some schooners are wrecked, they 
are mostly soft wood affairs, but I am not sure that a 
summer wreck has brought a drowning since I have 
been on the coast. 

Long periods of calm prevail, more especially in the 



40 Labrador 

north. The fishermen tell of glassy days at Mugford 
and north which run on until they lose time, becalmed, 
which they can ill afford. Of course the open sea is 
never quite flat, for unless in strong land winds there 
is always some heave. 

When blows come on, as they do, it is not an un- 
common thing for a crew to put out all the ground 
tackle available and get ashore, especially when the 
alternative is lying in a harbor with other schooners 
to windward. These, of course, may drag and smash 
their way through the fleet. This practice of abandon- 
ment has a doubtful look at first; certainly it is not 
sticking to one's ship. It must be a curious sight to 
see twenty or thirty schooners tossing to the wind, 
deserted, and the crews scattered among the shacks on 
shore hugging the fire. But it is not timidity. When 
there is anything better to be done they do it, and they 
know. 

They know the sea, and whatever can be done upon 
it they do as few can. I have not sailed much with 
them, but something of the ordinary day's doings of the 
fishing schooners came to me during a little run in 1907. 
I wanted to get from Hopedale to Davis Inlet, some 
sixty miles, and after a good deal of visiting about 
such craft as were in the harbor I got Captain Eliot, 
of Twillingate, to take me as far on my way as he 
might happen to go. His schooner was the Cambria. 
He would not bind himself further, for he was look- 
ing for fish, and his whole voyage, his year's fortunes, 
might turn on his seizing upon some chance opportu- 
nity to locate in a good " berth." He could neither be 
bound to my course nor have my concerns on his mind. 
But he agreed not to put me off in a dangerous sea. 



The Atlantic Coast 41 

Several other northbound captains had refused to take 
me at all ; though well enough disposed, they could not 
be bothered; mind and craft must be wholly unbound. 

Captain Eliot towed out of the harbor with a row- 
boat to a streak of light air outside, and got me on some 
twenty odd miles that day, to Windy Tickle, through 
the region of islands and bays known as Malta. Once 
during the forenoon, while most of the men were below, 
" mugging up " on hard bread and tea, there came a 
hard thump. The men questioned its being a rock, 
and mentioned ice. No one went up, but it was re- 
marked that she struck hard. Presently they did go 
up — for whatever purpose. Soon the skipper and 
another came down, without comment, and we beat 
along in the fresh breeze, the water land-sheltered and 
flat. When I suggested to Eliot that he must have 
sailed these waters many times, he replied, " No, not 
as far as this." Still he knew pretty well where to go. 
" When we have been a time or two over a route we 
know it well enough to sail it." 

He was watching everywhere for fish. Here and 
there along the islands or in far bays were lying other 
schooners. Off he would go in the rising breeze, for 
a speck of a hull or a masthead showing over some 
low island, down overboard into the boat towing 
behind, and away for a talk and a visit. His purpose 
was to find out that the other skipper was getting 
fish, if he was; the latter's, as a rule, to conceal the 
fact if he could. No crew on fish wants neighbors. 
Boats coming in from the traps were scanned, boats 
jigging vainly to find a '* sign " of fish were noted. 
Nothing escaped observation. A boat low down with 
fish would be a certain find. But it was early in the 



42 Labrador 

season, fish were scarce, and all the schooners floated 
high. Eliot had not a fish aboard and was keen ac- 
cordingly. " What's the use of talking with skip- 
pers? " I asked, " they won't tell you the truth." " I 
can tell pretty well by the way they talk," he answered. 
Almost always, I think, he could tell ; there were a good 
many indications to go by. So we went, often several 
miles about to one ahead, finding nothing worth stop- 
ping for. That night we lay in deep, precipitous 
Windy Tickle. Setting off as the tide began to fall in 
the morning we went fast upon rock bottom. The 
schooner being light the matter was probably no worse 
in any case than the loss of a tide, twelve hours, but 
Eliot, acting with great energy and steadiness, putting 
off a boat anchor and keeping his sails drawing full, 
got off in twenty minutes. I had thrown up my hands 
in his behalf, given up, and told him so; the tide was 
falling and it seemed useless to try long. 

We went off the rock with wind and tide carrying 
us rapidly, the long rope to the boat anchor paying out 
fast overside, spinning up from the deck in jumping 
loops and coils that were dangerous to go near. In 
order to save the line and kedge a man sprang to the 
job of fastening a float to the end of the line before 
it ran out overboard. Remarkable to see was his clever 
fence with the snatching coils, risky to approach, and 
the time was short; but before it was too late he actu- 
ally cuffed a hitch around the float without ever really 
laying hold of the line, and the trick was done. There 
had not been an excited word throughout, unless from 
me, much less swearing. When I talked, afterward, 
*' We expect to be on bottom some," was all the skipper 
said, though he owned the boat. 



The Atlantic Coast 43 

After the kedge and line had been picked up we 
moved for the open reaches beyond the tickle, under 
full sail. But we were not done with old Windy yet. 
I had gone below and was talking with the cook in the 
large space forward when a low boom came from be- 
neath, followed by another a little louder, with some 
jar, though the schooner kept on — we seemed to be 
rolling along on loose boulders that lay on the level 
rock bottom at the head of the tickle. I looked at the 
square of light above at the top of the ladder with an 
impulse to climb, then at the cook, who seemed steady 
enough ; and the cook so taking it, I did not care to be 
the one to bolt. Several times we struck, the boom 
sounding rather impressive in the empty hold. After 
staying a decent time below I went up, presently re- 
marking to Eliot as to our too easterly position. 
"There isn't hardly water enough for her at this tide," 
he observed, but slacked no sail. Then we ran into the 
open bay beyond. 

Eliot had never been there before. When he asked 
once where to go I could say little, having been over 
that water only in small boats. " We have mostly to 
go by the slope of the shores, in places where we haven' 
been," he remarked, and in answer to a question, " Yes, 
we often have to go where we don't know the ground, 
when we are beating." But there was no indifference; 
going up the run there were always three pairs of eyes, 
side by side, scanning the water ahead. The intentness 
of the three lookouts never faltered, yet it seemed to 
me useless to look for any but very high shoals. 

In a few miles we drew up on a schooner ahead. 
" There's a pilot for us," said Eliot. " Are you sure 
that she knows where she is going? " I asked. " He's 



44 Labrador 

a neighbor of mine and knows this ground," he 
answered. With shortened sail we followed on in the 
track of the other schooner. , I should not have known 
that Eliot had been anxious, but now I saw his relief. 
Five miles from Davis Inlet the pilot schooner turned 
sharply, more than half round, and went off down a 
long passage toward the open sea. I happened to be 
just taking some tea and hard bread below, but before 
I got started on it Eliot put his head into the gangway 
and asked if I was willing to get off there. I certainly 
did not care to — the wind was strong and there was 
an annoying slop on; moreover, I wanted my tea and 
bite, my " mug-up," before going to work. But Eliot 
had already done a great deal for me, there was a ques- 
tion of sporting blood, and in a few minutes I was over- 
side and bobbing about in my canoe, empty and rueful, 
but with honor saved, the schooner off down the pas- 
sage like a bird to overhaul her pilot. My mug-up 
came two or three hours later, with some Eskimo I 
knew, who were camping on the " Red Point " below 
Davis Inlet post. It had been a vicious wind and hard 
rowing, though happily the run was landlocked. 




THE COOK OF THE CAMBRIA 




OVERTURNING ICE , NEAR VOISEY'S BAY, 1905 



CHAPTER IV 
fanny's harbor 

Early the 8th of July, 1903, we ran from Hopedale 
to Fanny's Harbor, and I scrambled up on Tom 
Spracklin's stage, to stay longer than I then imagined. 
Tom stared a little, but agreed to take me in — it was 
a matter of course. Afterward the people of the place 
said I looked a poor risk, for a person knocking about, 
and what with leavings from old malaria and the marks 
of a coldish voyage with evil ventilation, perhaps it 
was so. Cod had not come in, but Spracklin had a 
gill net out for sea trout, and we did well for food. 

Fanny's is on the east side of Cape Harrigan Island, 
with a short, narrow entrance, which has, of course, 
a rock in the middle. " There is always a harbor 
rock," the fishermen say. The harbor is small and 
rocky, but the shore is low to the west, where are flat 
moss tundra and the shallow dead ponds common to 
all bog places in the North, Tom's literary imagina- 
tion, which I was to appreciate later, led him to remark 
on there being " a million geese over there in the fall." 
There are a good many, dropping in from north on 
September days. 

The island is three or four miles across. Out to 
sea are shoals and rocks, and here the pack ice makes 
its July stand against all craft. This was an early 
season and the pack just let us in, stringing off to sea 

45 



46 Labrador 

for good by nightfall. In 1905 it was strong the 
22d of July, and the Virginia had to turn back south, 
after some hours of heavy ramming; she had to go into 
dry dock aftenvard at St. John's, to touch up her 
screw. 

The western hills of the island, gray and desolate, 
are six or seven hundred feet high and offer a good 
lookout. Soon settled I took my rifle and paddled 
over to the moss ground around which the hills circle. 
The head wind was almost too much for my single 
paddle, and my progress was made a subject of de- 
pressing comment after I got back. 

The island is plain Arctic, and was to me a new utterly 
northern world, none the less for the bergs always in 
the offing. Just out of steamer confinement, I walked 
with quick feet. What looked like grass, in the lower 
lands, was moss. ]\Iuch of the footing was velvety 
and firm, even on the bogs, though in places they were 
like bogs everywhere. The early flowers were many, 
some with stems an inch long, some less; the best 
quite like our bluet in shape, but a marvelous pink in 
color, and growing in dense patches the size of one's 
hand. It is all but stemless. An Eskimo woman has 
called it, from description, the irok, but there may have 
been a mistake of identity. 

In damp places the white blossoms of the bake apple 
or cloudberry showed above the moss, and where it was 
drier those of the familiar serviceberry and of the 
northern blueberry, clinging flat to the ground. On 
the hills were scattered boulders, lichened on sheltered 
faces, and little plats and streaks of moss, though at 
a distance the hills appeared to be of absolutely life- 
less gray rock. That there should be animal life in 



Fanny's Harbor 47 

such sheer desolation seemed out of the question, still 
less that it should turn out a rabbit pasture, but near 
the top of the highest hill I came upon my first arctic 
hare. They are invisible enough when not moving, 
even on the bare rock. It was as if one of the smaller 
boulders had risen near my feet and hopped away, and 
its size was astonishing. It would not do to say that 
it looked as big as a sheep, whatever the fact, but it 
certainly was conspicuous. They seem larger to us 
than any western jack rabbits. The summer hare is 
mainly blue gray. In winter the tips of the ears re- 
main black, but the rest is white, a wonderful long 
dense fur, white to the very skin. Our common white 
hare of the forests is brown below the tips of the hair, 
and the animal lookes small and ill clad by comparison. 
The arctic hare Hves chiefly on the coast islands, where 
there is least danger of wolves and foxes. Its su- 
periorities extend eminently to the table, but the 
beautiful skin, handsomer to my mind than that of the 
arctic fox, is not durable, and brings only five or ten 
cents at the store. 

At about ninety yards the hare stopped and I fired. 
He went off holding up his fore leg, and for a long 
time I followed on, finally to a rock pile, a natural 
refuge. I was sorry to leave him maimed and I took 
a great deal of trouble trying to recover him. What 
puzzled me was that there was no trace anywhere of 
blood or hare. I gave up quite depressed, and it was 
months before I learned that this hare frequently runs 
on two legs, holding up its front paws. The shot was 
doubtless a miss, more probably as I had never fired 
that rifle before. 

A large gray loon I shot floated out with the tide. 



48 Labrador 

There were horned larks blowing about the rocks, and 
a smaH, slaty bird with a striped head. Between two 
small ponds a muskrat was carrying grass or roots up 
a little brook. There were some flocks of ducks out 
of reach, and many gulls. Next to the hare the most 
notable creature of the d«ay was a great brown eider 
duck which fairly lifted me by thundering up from 
between my feet. It skimmed far over the tundra like 
a shearwater. There were six eggs, laid on a filmy 
mat of down; the nest was in a dry place several rods 
from water. 

Although not getting the hare was a disappointment 
to me, one is not always sorry for shooting badly, and 
so it turned out on a ramble of the second morning. 
In a little cliff not far from the harbor lived some 
ravens. It was a convenient and prosperous location 
for them, for their home ledge was near the harbor and 
stage, and the leavings from the fishing kept them in 
plenty. The fishing being scarcely on as yet there 
appeared nothing of doubtful quality for them to eat, 
and as some one had told me that raven's meat was 
white and good, unlike crow, I thought it a good 
chance to try one. They were not shy, but the wind 
was coming in quick, pushing gusts, and my first shot 
was a miss. The bird took no notice, being occupied 
in balancing itself in the wind, with many flirts, but 
presently flew a few yards to a sheltered shelf. As I 
prepared to try again a second raven lit beside him, and 
I paused to observe their meeting. Ravens have a 
dignity absent in the crow, and the trait was manifest. 
For some time I watched- them. Their fine unconsci- 
ousness of being observed, though I was near and in 
plain sight, was as that of high personages. I might 



Fanjiy's Harbor 49 

not have existed, was not even accorded notice as an 
intruder. I began to feel uncomfortable. Their per- 
sonable presence, their affectionate courtesy toward 
each other, became too much for my purpose, and 
before long, thankful that my shot had missed, I took 
myself away. 

That afternoon I went southwest a couple of miles, 
across the low ground, and over a pass which leads to 
the schooner anchorage in Windy Tickle. There was 
a little scrub spruce in the pass, and dwarf birch, the 
" deerbush " which caribou like so well in summer. 
It is an agreeable bush to the eye, with shiny, roundish 
leaves, neatly scalloped, and the size of a dime. The 
bush has the general habit of our home laurel and alder. 

There had been quite a wind, and consequently no 
trouble from mosquitoes. Turning* back the breeze 
lessened, moving with me- at about my own speed. I 
had no gloves or other defense, and shortly mosquitoes 
began to- be annoying. Before long they had grown 
to a thick swarm, raging like wasps. I had supposed 
I knew all about mosquitoes, from many years of trout 
fishing. On a still evening on the Bersimis we had 
been wretched, Indians and all, in spite of ten, punk fires 
going. B.ut now I became almost frightened. I had 
been tired, walking all day after the inaction of the 
voyage, and sorry to have to walk back across the 
yielding bog land, but that matter of regret soon 
vanished from my mind, and I took to a hard run, 
thrashing with a branch and only wishing that my other 
hand was not occupied with my gun. Winded, 1 would 
turn and walk slowly back into the breeze until good 
for another run. Eight hundred of the enemy, as I 
reckoned, followed into the canoe and kept the affair 



50 Labrador 

going while I crossed the half mile of harbor. One 
has to have both hands in paddling, unfortunately. 

I had had my lesson — was "blooded." Never 
from that day, and for some years following I passed 
much of the summer in that country, have I gone away 
from shelter without special means of protection. 

So with each new companion from south — there 
is the same assurance based on past experience, the 
same onset when mosquito conditions arrive, the same 
half panic, and the acquisition of a permanent memory. 
None ever forgets. 

As to getting over the twenty miles to Davis Inlet, 
Spracklin would have been glad enough to take me, but 
was short handed. He thought some of the " Labra- 
dorians " ought to come along; however, if not, he 
would rig his jack, which only needed a bit of 
calking, and get me over. Meanwhile I talked to Bella 
Lane, over at Jim Spracklin's place, across the harbor 
entrance ; she lived in the next bay and knew the way 
of things. Some Naskapi were down in June, and 
would be in again soon. Opetik Bay was the place, 
fifty miles north. There seemed to be reason for 
thinking they had some large lake not far inland where 
they summered. The near lake, in the end proved a 
myth, but Bella, who by the way had looks, was rather 
nearer right than most other coast people I have asked 
about Indians. The inland is none of theirs. 

I was rather restless, but in a day or two Labra- 
dorians came, in the persons of Sam Bromfield and 
Sandy Geer, and would take me to the Inlet. Their 
price was high, but they were stiff. Long afterward 
Sam's conscience stirred, and he told me that, in what 
was certainly a neighborly spirit, Spracklin had coached 




AT RED POINT 




DAVIS INLET 



Fanny's Harbor 51 

him up — the American was " bound to get across." 

Yet at nearly the same time I must have quahfied 
as a neighbor too, in some imperceptible way, for 
from that day on Spracklin's kindness to me was un- 
failing. I fell often upon his hospitalities and for 
years was as glad to see his face as any on the coast. 

It was late in the day when we got off, towing the 
canoe in an uneasy slop. For a couple of miles we 
were outside the cape, heading for an island called the 
Devil's Thumb. The name is not so farfetched ; the 
outline of a bent back thumb can be imagined, and for 
the rest the name of his Highness and one part or an- 
other of his anatomy is always in order where rocks 
and outdoor people are. The Thumb is unspeakably 
barren. It is the seawartd member of the cape group. 
Traces of lichen scurf show on the landward side, but 
facing the north the high, steep hill is utterly naked, a 
monument to the inconceivable winter gales. In a 
more tolerable latitude the entire rock might yet be 
ground up for fertilizer, for it appears to the eye to be 
wholly of whitish or pink feldspar. 

For a while we were under the sheer cliffs of the 
main island, and Sam watched the puffs nervously. 
Well that he was undersparred, as all open-boat people 
go when their shores are high — and few shores are 
otherwise on the Labrador. His two stout masts, un- 
stayed, were ready to be jerked from their sockets and 
laid down if the " lop " became too sharp. The relief 
to a boat in a seaway when this is done is remarkable. 

The local rig is simple. The after sail generally 
has a sprit and boom, the foresail a sprit only, and 
there is often a, bit of a jib. Among the cod fishermen 
tanned sails prevail. I have wondered if there was an 



52 Labrador 

esthetic side to this, beyond the mere matter of wear. 
Certainly the eye does not demand the white of sails in 
the North — more white on a sea where shining ice and 
ghostly fog are one's lifelong enemies — not near to, 
at any rate. White sails may be harmonious, but when 
one is satiated with ice upon ice, and thick weather, 
and pickled air from the bergs and salt ice-pans of 
Baffin's Bay, one doesn't mind resting the eye upon a 
bit of warm brown here and there. 

Sam's mind eased as we made the wider waters and 
lower shores beyond the Thumb. The long sculling 
oar took up the work as the wind failed and talk began. 
Sam loquens is Sam in his glory, altogether to my profit 
on that trip; it took some chilly hours to get to Davis 
Inlet Post, and by the time we were there I knew a good 
deal about the region. The conversation was pleas- 
antly personal in places, Sam waving gently at his long 
stern oar and I bunched in wraps beside him. His 
all-round gray whiskers gave him age enough to make 
me naturally deferential. As we progres'sed he looked 
down at me sympathetically. " I suppose you are 
about my age, about sixty?" A little aback I finally 
came in, " Well — er, — not quite that, yet." He 
acquiesced, perhaps doubtfully. It was rather hard, 
for I still had fifteen years to go. There was more 
tact in his question than appeared, so I learned later. 
Only fifty-five himself, he had placed his age higher to 
save my venerable feelings. 

We passed Kutalik or Massacre Island close and 
were off the Mountaineers' Rock, a small affair awash 
at low tide. Sam told its tale. In old days when war- 
fare between the Eskimo and Mountaineers of the in- 
land was unrelenting the Eskimo of the neighborhood 



Fanny's Harbor 53 

were camped on the smooth moss ground of the western 
side of Kutalik, where their old rings of tent stones 
are still visible. While the men were off hunting 
Indians descended upon the women and children, killed 
them all, threw them into the sea, and departed. As 
the Eskimo men were returning one of them saw some- 
thing floating and threw his spear, finding then that he 
had transfixed the boot and foot of his own wife, killed 
with the rest. ... It was late in the day, and the 
Mountaineers' Rock lay toward the sunset, some three 
miles away. The Eskimo noticed that the rock seemed 
higher than usual. As the tide came to its height they 
saw the Mountaineers leave the flooded rock and 
paddle up the bay beyond to the mainland. They had 
been concealed under their canoes, pl-aced close together, 
and it was these which gave the rock its unusual eleva- 
tion. The Eskimo followed them after dark, sur- 
rounded their camp, and speared them to a man. 

Some say that Eskimo men as well as. women were 
floating in the water that day. At all events the story 
shows how things went between the two races, from 
Maine, perhaps, around the northern shores to Alaska. 
They have little taste for each other to this day, 
although white influence at the shores has ended the 
fighting. There is no doubt that, man for man, with 
the primitive weapons, the Eskimo. was at no disadvan- 
tage, but the Indians acquired guns first and gradually 
forced the shore dwellers out of the Gulf of St. 
Lawrence and to the north. 

The Indians' families, back on the country, were 
probably not much exposed in the fighting, while those 
of the Eskimo were, as they could be easily found along 
the shores. Yet it is not likely that the initiative has 



54 Labrador 

always been with the Indians. The two main causes 
of trouble among simple people in the world at least 
have been infringement of territory and woman steal- 
ing ; and the Eskimo, while at a disadvantage from their 
shore habitat, have doubtless had some share in aggres- 
sion an-d its proceeds. There are some Indian-looking 
individuals among the Eskimo. The case of Indian- 
Eskimo adoption, on the other side, is strong. Maine 
Indians show Eskimo peculiarties of skull. A Cree I 
traveled with in 1909 remembered that the old people 
on Hudson's Bay used to tell of adopting Eskimo 
women and children; and the practice, broadly, of adop- 
tion from among their captives, even of men, has been 
widespread among tribes of the temperate area. The 
well-known fact that at the height of their power the 
Iroquois tribes had as much -foreign blood, chiefly 
Algonquian, as of their own, is in accord with the con- 
tinental tendency. 

To-day nevertheless, it is rather hard to imagine a 
pure Indian of northeast Labrador marrying an 
Eskimo. Their antipathy seems racial. The Eskimo 
seems to regard the Indian as a hateful predatory 
creature of the wolf or panther kind. The Indian 
view is not so easy to assume; the Eskimo revolts him 
a little; his dirt, his lack of dignity, his diet, his smell. 
The Indian has given to him what to his own mind is 
almost as bad a name as he could, for the word Eskimo 
is Algonquian fo-r Eater of the Raw. The Indian is 
particular in having his food cooked. 

Late in the winter the Eskimo of the "coast go inland 
for caribou nearly to the height of land, but only in 
strong parties, so far as I can learn. Many of the 
white or partly white shore' people tell of going into the 



Fanny's Harbor 55 

interior one or two hundred miles, always in winter, 
but really they do not go far, and " signs of Indians " 
are mentioned with bated breath. Some of the shore 
people are pretty well acquainted with the individual 
Indians now, for the latter are peaceable enough at the 
shore, but a shore person hunting alone at a distance 
inland would, I think, be made uncomfortable if dis- 
covered. 

Sam was wholly interesting about the bay life, the 
hunting for deer and seals, the trapping for fur. The 
walrus is rare now ; sometimes a straggler comes: along 
from Chidley way, and sometimes still a white bear. 
Black bears ane common game though not too plenty; 
silver foxes, the dream of all Labrador hunters, are 
caught in some numbers, and Sam had had his share 
of them. There were otters and some few martens in 
the valleys near the coast. 

Summer was given up to fishing. The midsummer 
fishing was for sea trout and salmon, which lasted until 
the cod came in. All the people of the coast were 
hunters and fishermen, there was no attempt at plant- 
ing this ground ; they lived by rifle, net, and trap, only 
the cod coming by the hook. 

Open boating is apt to be a cold, long-drawn matter 
in northern waters, and such was this voyage with 
Sam. The last of the trip to the Inlet rests much with 
the tide: if it is falling, strong wind is needed to get 
up; if rising, all goes well in any case. The post, 
with its flagpole and row of white buildings, shipshape 
as Hudson's Bay Company stations always are, is 
backed by quite a hillside of small, dense spruce. The 
larger growth has been culled out in the course of years. 

At the landing we were met pleasantly by Stuart 



56 Labrador 

Cotter, the master of the post. The arrival of the 
winter's mail, which we had brought along, was an 
event hardly second to any in the Hudson's Bay Com- 
pany calendar. Cotter made little expression as we 
handed it to him, but in truth was a little dazed at find- 
ing his hands actually upon it. He was a young man, 
a bachelor withal, and had many friends in the outside 
world. As we stood on the wharf, the back of his 
neck became pretty well covered with large mosquitoes 
— the post is a fierce place for them, what with fresh 
water, grass, and dogs. I told him about them as we 
passed up from the wharf, but the tension of the occa- 
sion, the coming of the mail and a strange visitor to- 
gether, was too much; unconscious, he carried them all 
into the house. 



CHAPTER V 

INDIANS 

We talked until one in the morning, though I re- 
minded Cotter more than once that he had not opened 
his mail. During the rest of the night I waked enough 
once or twice to notice a crack of light under my door 
coming from his room. Referring to it at breakfast 
it turned out he had been reading his mail all night 
and had not gone to bed at all! His predecessor at 
the post was not otherwise, he could not sleep the night 
after getting his annual mail. This for Cotter, a 
strong young fellow of thirty, who ought to sleep well 
under any circumstances, was rather notable; but, 
after all, winter is long anywhere north, and more 
than long in such a place of limited society. 

We had sea trout of two or three pounds, tasting 
between winninish and brook trout, for breakfast, and 
barren ground caribou for dinner, killed in winter and 
kept in a snowdrift still visible across the run; the 
venison was particularly good. Alongside the cold- 
storage drift was a conspicuous vertical fissure up and 
down a cliff, accepted as a convenient noon mark, being 
exactly south from the post. The " run " lies east and 
west here, and is just a sea mile wide. 

Now came real travel. I should have had a sad time 
that year without a canoe ; there was not another on all 
the coast from Belle Isle to Chidley. It was hard to 

57 



58 Labrador 

get into the interior as it was, for want of help. This 
seemed strange to me, for there were enough people 
along, all hunters; but even now, after years' visits 
to the coast, there is only one person, and he a boy, 
whom I should think of taking inland. The worth- 
while men are busy fishing in summer, and at best have 
no taste for the heat and flies of the back country; 
still less, and this is a serious matter, for the evil pres- 
ences of Eskimo theology. Under all, moreover, is the 
feeling that the Indians regard their presence in the 
country with disfavor. 

There was a good deal of discussion as to what could 
be done, and in the end Cotter turned me over to John 
Oliver for safe conduct to Opetik Bay, where the 
Indians were likely to come out soon. They thought 
a man up there named George might go with me. In 
this they spoke rather faintly, but I felt hopeful enough; 
any human with legs could at least go along and be 
company; I should see a little of the country anyway, 
and need not risk missing the Indians by going farther 
than we could trace out their usual route. Oliver, my 
present boatman, was a half Eskimo of a good sort, 
way-wise from having seen the world, possibly too much 
of it, with a party of natives who had been exhibited 
at the Buffalo World's Fair and in European capitals. 
Tips of real gold had not spoiled him as a seal hunter, 
and he was a good companion. 

Travel goes much by tides in the calm summer days. 
We dropped west with a current along the run for a 
few miles before dark to the summer hut of an Eskimo 
named Daniel, for the Moravians have given their 
people Bible names along here. More lately, and better 
counseled, they are bringing in the native names again. 




DANIEL'S SUMMER HOUSE 




DANIEL'S DOGS 



Indians 59 

We went ashore. Sleeping in an open boat is not so 
bad, but things ashore promised better, and my confi- 
dence in the housekeeping of Mrs. Daniel — Mrs. 
Daniel Noah it was in full — was not misplaced. The 
little round-faced daughter was winning and pretty. 
A sealy flavor prevailed, not disagreeable thus in 
moderation. Small sea trout, split and gashed, were 
drying on a line; the larger ones were salted and sold 
to the post. Fish spawn, like slim strings of dried 
apples, was hanging about, and a bunch of small caribou 
horns decorated the gable. 

Their floor was the smooth rock, a good bed for us 
visitors. Cracks in the walls let in plenty of air, and 
for the first time since leaving St. John's I had air 
enough. Intentional ventilation is rare in the northern 
world, for mosquitoes come in with air in summer, and 
cold in winter; the word ventilation is unknown. 

Trout, of course, of shining memory, were the 
breakfast, with bread and tea. A number of beauti- 
ful young dogs met us outside, fairly leaping over each 
other at the sound of Daniel's voice. They quieted 
down, scattering about sleepily in the sun, and mos- 
quitoes began to settle upon them. Relief came, how- 
ever, in a pretty way. A handsome sparrow, the 
White-crowned, flew down, and hopping up to a dog 
whose head was conveniently low, cleared every mos- 
quito, one by one, from his face. The dog did not 
move, though he might easily have snapped up the bird. 
The animal's face done with, the bird jumped upon its 
outstretched body and rambled over it, leaving no mos- 
quito behind. The Eskimo call the bird kutshituk, 
" fly eater." 

Daniel went along with us in his own boat to his 



60 Labrador 

winter house, some seven or eight miles, cracking away 
now and then at the loons with a worn-out .44 rifle, and 
shooting very badly. His house is a log house, on a 
passage spoken of as Daniel's Rattle, where rock cod 
are abundant in winter, and where, no less important 
to an Eskimo, all the winter travel of the coast passes 
the door. A rattle, by the way, is a passage where the 
current is so swift as to be noisy. We nooned at Jim 
Lane"s place, Opetik Bay. He, like other people along, 
objected to taking pay for his hospitality, being only too 
glad to have company, but I prevailed in this ; it would 
not do for me, who might not come along again, to 
leave them the worse in pocket for my passing. 
Among themselves the meals with each other may 
balance up in the long run. 

While we were eating, Jim came in and asked if I 
wanted to see a white partridge. Turning out with 
the camera I found a willow ptarmigan walking about, 
unconcerned save with the management of a new- 
hatched family. She paid no attention to people or 
dogs. At a distance of thirty or forty feet I stopped 
with the camera. " You can go nearer," said Jim, 
" she won't mind you." Indeed she remained per- 
fectly unconcerned, and my last snap was taken at six 
feet. Jim said she had been about the place for some 
time. Considering the natural nervousness of hen 
birds with chicks I thought the showing of fearlessness 
remarkable, and a light not only upon Jim's ways but 
those of his dogs. Jim looked his part, but he must 
have had a wonderful relation with those high-tailed 
Eskimo dogs. Such dogs snap up a cat or other small 
creature in short order ordinarily, and by reputation 



Indians 61 

are a savage lot; but after this episode and that of the 
kutshituk I began to have views of my own. 

Wind carried us against tide five or six miles to 
George's, where the family were salting away trout at 
the rate of a barrel a day, fetching four dollars. The 
very small house was placed upon an island rock, 
to be away from mosquitoes, if somewhat vainly. 
Skins of loons indicated the prevailing kind of water- 
fowl; Opetik is one of their favorite places. On this 
coast everything birdlike is eaten, loons, gulls, owls, 
and guillemots. We had had eiders' eggs at Lane's; 
at this place there were sea pigeons' eggs, better yet. 
The pigeon, merely a little black diver, produces not 
only a large superior tgg, but so much meat and such 
good meat that its being about everywhere is surpris- 
ing. Its neat webbed feet, done in red, and used as a 
tail in flying, together with the white patches on its 
wing coverts, lend it quite a distinction when in the air. 
It nests in holes among the rocks, high above the water, 
and the first young ones are white in winter. 

George doubted taking on much of a job, but would 
go along to William's up the bay, and we would talk 
it over. We were there, at the head of the bay, before 
night, at the foot of picturesque bare hills and moun- 
tains rising toward the interior. William (Edmunds), 
a virile part Eskimo whom I have always liked and re- 
spected, could speak pretty good English, and that eve- 
ning we talked over all things. He was getting trout 
and some salmon, but said his place was not as good for 
fish as that of his brother David in Shung-ho bay, 
which we had traversed without crossing over to the 
house. David caught in good years eighty or a hun- 



62 Labt^ador 

dred barrels of trout, and in marksmanship, hunting 
skill, and personal strength was fairly king of the re- 
gion. He and L'ane were peers in a way, and old hunt- 
ing companions. David had been known to put his 
sled after a running herd of caribou and kill seven with 
seven cartridges while dogs and deer were doing their 
best. Wonderful shots are some of these part-Eskimo 
bay men, whose practice is at seals' heads and water- 
fowl from their uneasy boats. 

We canvassed the matter of going inland. William 
ought to have known the Indian route well, but whether 
he gave George the benefit of his knowledge is douiDt- 
ful. The Indians generally came out at William's place 
and left their canoes, taking his sailboat the rest of the 
way to the post. He or his son would do the naviga- 
ting, and by virtue of sails, oars, and their familiar 
knowledge of tide cu.rrents, the Indians paddling in 
numbers when necessary, night or day, they commonly 
made fast time. Sometimes they made a stop at Lane's. 
His sister, Mrs. Tom Geer, who lives there now, tells 
how well the Indian women cook, on the rare occasions 
when they come to the coast. 

George finally agreed to go as far as I cared to ; and 
off we went in the morning. " I'm in a canoe ! I'm in 
a canoe ! " he sang, between funk and exhilaration, as 
we moved away from the group at the landing ; it was 
in truth his first canoe ride. The tide took us two or 
three miles up to a little' stream called by the Indians 
Mushauau Sheho, Barren Ground River, and we had a 
good start by luncheon time, when our leisurely meal 
was graced by an excellent piece of bear meat William 
had given us to start on. George was one of the few 
white men of the region, trimly built, of a sailor's 




FROM DANIEL'S HOUSE 




LOOKING ACROSS DAVIS INLET 



Indians 63 

handiness, and Withal talked well about the concerns of 
the coast and the various families of the bays. He had 
traces of descent, as if there had been better stock some- 
where back. The stock and speech of the region are 
mostly Devonshire. Some of the firstcomers, who 
married Eskimo women and took up the best bays, may 
have been men who were turning their backs on a past. 
" Most of our people had to leave England," remarked 
George easily. 

Here the lower ground had trees, chiefly spruce, and 
the portages between some small lakes were tangled and 
without a visible trail. The going seemed bad to me 
after the regular Indian paths of the southern-slope 
rivers I was used to. Caribou paths were everywhere. 
The last of the migration had passed north about a week 
before in their usual way, first the does and young over 
the hills, afterward the old stags through the valleys. 
In all my time in the country since then I have never ob- 
served such beaten paths. Sometimes they led our way 
and we followed them, always to have them split up be- 
fore long and disappear. We camped at the head of 
the" last lake, on a good beach, where Indians had had 
fire before us. 

From there there was no boatable water for some 
miles, all was rough land work ; the valley was hot and 
mosquitoes active. The canoe weighed ninet3^-one or 
two, and with the paddles and a few odds and ends 
stuffed in carried at not less than a hundred. The 
other luggage was not light ; we had to double portage 
the way, and took even three loads each over the 
rougher places. Until the third day, for fear of effects 
on George's enthusiasm, I did not dare to let him carry 
the canoe ; after that, as he had done pretty well, and as 



64 Labrador 

I thought he would see by that night that it would be 
easier to reach water ahead than behind, I gave him 
his chance at it. When night came the place where we 
happened to camp was the farthest point he had ever 
been to in that direction. It was evident that not more 
than three or four miles ahead there must be a stream, 
but as to the Indian route we had become uncertain. 
Talking at William's, George had professed to know 
just where the Indians went, but now he owned that he 
didn't know, and I was decidedly sharp with him. 
There were a few signs of Indians along, but nothing 
to show regular travel. 

The night went well, at least for me. Before 
breakfast I had explored ahead for a mile, found good 
travel, and returned very cheerful. George was wholly 
unresponsive and pretty soon began to talk, his voice 
quavered. He had " laid awake until the birds were 
singing," thinking about things ahead. His boots were 
thin ; his shoulders and neck were cut by the canoe ; his 
family might be in trouble; the fishing needed him; it 
was hot, and the flies were bad. Finally, and there 
were tears in his voice, " You will go over to the river ! 
and then up to the big lake ! and then there is no telling 
where you will go ! " Here his voice reached too high 
a pitch and broke. It was certainly a bad funk. After 
I told him he could go back if he wanted to his voice 
gradually recovered, and he said something about tak- 
ing my rifle for his pay. The final touch appeared 
when he remarked that he had only agreed to go for a 
day or two. This was just too much, and walking up 
to him with two fists I induced him to take it back. 
He was a poor thing, and probably did more work for 
me those three days than in any three days, or six, 



Indians 65 

before or since. His neighbors told me afterward that 
his idea in starting out with me was to come into owner- 
ship of the rifle after the trip had failed, a good rifle 
being something like a fortune there. 

He departed, and I felt truly better, though being 
left alone in such a place is an awkward thing. There 
seemed nothing for it but to keep along to boatable 
water. At least I had everything I wanted, and plenty 
of time. 

Making up a pack about equal to the weight of the 
canoe, and abandoning the rest of the outfit, I took the 
load ahead a few hundred yards ; then going back to 
the canoe I carried it on past the pack for a distance 
and so on in alternation. Thus the pack and canoe 
were never very far apart and not difficult to find. 
When carrying, one's eyes are so shut in under the canoe 
or so held to the front by a head strap that one does 
not see much by the way, and if the rear pack is very 
far back its location may easily be lost in bad ground. 

It was something of a hard day, with the heat and 
mosquitoes and a few loose sand banks to climb; but 
like Crusoe in his lone scrape I had also my blessings 
— peace and a good appetite, and now and then a rest, 
with a bit to eat and a pipe. Occasionally through the 
day I stopped and gave a long whoop — for the benefit 
of Indians, if any were passing in the valley. 

About four, I came out unexpectedly on a high es- 
carpment over a little winding river, two hundred feet 
below; a goodlier sight never cheered a tired portager. 
The way the canoe slid down that high sand bank on 
its own bottom was not slow. The stream is known 
to the shore people as Side brook, but at that time I 
supposed it to be what is known as Frank's brook, the 



66 Labrador 

river of the Indians. That night I slept under the 
canoe near an Indian marked tree. It rained gently 
and the mosquitoes for a good way around came under 
too, although they did not get inside my good net. The 
canoe made a sounding-board and their screeching roar 
in the pent-up place was almost unendurable. At such 
times it is hard to shake off the fear of their finally get- 
ting at one. Their vindictive yells are beyond all 
wolves. ''*' We are going to get you! " is their burden. 
I woke many times with nightmarish starts, and made 
a poor night of it. 

Cutting a pole in the morning I made seven or eight 
miles upstream, caught some trout at a falls and 
lunched. So far the river had a firm velvet bottom, 
with some three feet of water — wonderful poling. 
The valley was now close, with thick alders, and I was 
able to find out whether the Indians traveled there. 
Examination of the tangled banks showed that they had 
not, and I was in a quandary, but finally looked about 
for a high observation point. A mountain at hand 
looked desperately bushy, and was steep, but on getting 
to it I struck a perfectly easy deer path leading all the 
way up. The outlook, my first wide view of the in- 
land, was memorable. Coming from west was a broad, 
fine river that evidently the Indians must follow, with 
bold hills to the south and the escarpment of a high 
plateau dropping into it from the north. Not far south- 
west, upon the stream I had come up, was a beautiful 
round lake two or three miles across, set deep in the 
hills; not far below this lake the river turned about 
north and slid smoothly but white down a slightly slop- 
ing rock face some fifty feet high. The extreme 
western horizon was notched by a rock-walled lake of 



Indians 67 

the larger river, where the cliffs had impressiveness 
even at the thirty miles distance, and there were high 
ridges far beyond. This was all the interior country 
I saw that year, still it extended more than half way 
from the coast to the height of land. 

The lake at the head of the small river was so tempt- 
ing that I thought of nothing but getting up to it and 
setting out my little gill net to see what was in it, and 
going back down the mountain I portaged the half 
mile of alder banks to the head of the rapids. In the 
course of the nasty double trip I lost my axe, and not 
caring to spend much time looking it up, I left the place 
without it. At any rate I was well over the worst 
ground on the way to the lake, and sat awhile resting 
and watching some good trout slapping about in the 
smooth water at the head of the rapid. It is a little 
curious, by the way, that in these streams of size the 
trout seem to prefer the smooth water above the falls 
to the pools below. That evening they were good to 
see, clearing the water here and there with assuring 
frequency. But as I meditated upon my situation it 
came to me that I was in a fair way to miss the Indians 
altogether if I went on. The lay of the country was 
such that while they could approach the coast from 
almost any direction, and would be hard to find at best, 
this particular stream led from a pocket in the hills 
which was quite out of their course. There was some 
chance of my meeting them somewhere nearer Opetik, 
but the sure way was to go back to Davis Inlet and wait. 
This conclusion was not to be avoided. Rather ill- 
naturedly I retraced the hard little portage, dropped 
down river until ten o'clock, when the sun was well 
down, and made a sky camp, i.e., boiled a kettle, and lay 



68 Labrador 

down on the mossy ground alongside the fire. The 
night was clear, there was a white frost, and the mos- 
quitoes slept through as well as I. It was a night for a 
king! 

There was no real darkness on clear nights ; one could 
always see the place of the sun at midnight. Always, 
when it was clear, the northern lights were visible, mov- 
ing and pausing, and in many weird forms. This is 
their latitude ; in the far North they are rare. To one 
alone in the wilderness they are strangely affecting. 

To the Indians of the inland they are spirits of the 
departed; their people who have gone before are danc- 
ing in the sky. Some have heard the rustling of their 
wild figures, perhaps in truth. 

Once again they rush and gather, 
Hands around they swing together, 
Robes are trailing in the skyland. 

The people's belief is not strange. If any manifesta- 
tion of the inanimate has the aspect of the spiritual, it 
is this presence of the northern nights. 

Fine weather persisted, to my great advantage when 
I reached the larger waters. There was not much land 
life ; the trip had been nearly birdless, but now along the 
stream there were some few species. A white-winged 
crossbill and Canada jays of the darker sort were plain 
to identify. A lesser sheldrake appeared sitting on a 
rock, and there were birds of the finch or siskin kind 
about the spruce tops. All the portages seemed bad; 
a half-mile one just below where I first came to the 
stream I remember as annoyingly rough and tangled. 
I suspect that now, used to the country, they would 
seem pretty good ; still I was doing with hundred-pound 




THE NOAHS SPLITTING FISH, TUHPUNGIUK IN 
BACKGROUND 




UN'SEKAT 



Indians 69 

loads, which are something to a person lately from town, 
and more than have often fallen to me since. 

The matter of bad footing becomes important when 
one is alone, for an injury from a fall is perhaps the 
accident most to be dreaded. Water dangers are hardly 
as inevitable, at least good judgment, which, more- 
over, is not called for continuously, meets most water 
situations well. But any footstep in bad deceptive 
ground may cause a disabling fall to a heavily loaded 
person. In the case of two men together the water 
danger is the greater of the two. Accident and illness 
are not pleasant subjects for the lone traveler to think 
of. Enough things have happened. There was old 
Jock Knight, a trapper on the Magalloway, in Maine, 
vi^ho " laid out " in a hut on what is now " Jock's pond," 
forty days with erysipelas. " I didn't mind dying so 
much, but I didn't want to be eaten afterwards by the 
wild animals! I had fit 'em., fit 'em all my life and 
didn't want them to eat me." He was drowned, finally, 
when alone. There are tales enough of the sort. The 
pack is perhaps the most prevailing enemy of the lone 
traveler, who in winter almost always walks on the ice, 
and a man through the ice with a pack on is badly off. 
Once, though this is another story, while dragging a 
deer alone on the ice of a Maine stream, and looking 
long at the high top of Katahdjn, I walked into a 
perfectly plain open hole. Luckily the water was only 
four feet deep. 

Yet, on the other hand, few realize how different is 
the method of the man who is out alone from that of 
the same man when he is in company. Alone, he is 
deliberate, careful, circumspect; in company compara- 
tively hasty and heedless, his senses apt to be clouded 



70 Labrador 

by conversation. The number of persons, chiefly pro- 
fessional hunters, who are habitually much alone in the 
wilderness, is very large, yet I believe their serious 
accidents are very few in proportion, perhaps not one 
in ten; surely far fewer than among men who do the 
same things with companions. Still the old rule of 
the Narragansetts, mentioned by Roger Williams, " Do 
not travel far alone or without a weapon," is a good 
one, as all Indian rules are. 

Indian lodge poles and winter scaffolds at the head 
of the rapid mentioned indicated snow six or seven 
feet deep. The scaffolds were placed on the tops of 
small trees cut off and projected enough so that a 
wolverine could not climb over the edge. Below the 
rapid the stream was very twisty for seven or eight 
miles and the gravel bars yielded to sand. It was early 
in the season ; a little later I could not have passed with- 
out having to wade down the shallows. 

Unexpectedly I emerged from between highcut sand 
banks and floated out upon the wide main river, deep 
and clear and the bluest water I ever looked into. 
After actually scraping on sand bottom so long it seemed 
like going off into the air. This fine river was very 
wide, in truth this part was its tidal estuary, although 
the current moved well and the water was perfectly 
fresh. After being so long shut in I felt a sort of shy- 
ness at being run out into the open, at finding myself 
all at once well out on the wide, full-volumed river. 
Lower, near a rocky point, I shot a large loon with the 
rifle and at last had meat. 

From Side brook it was only three or four miles to 
the mouth of the river. A bar extended a mile or two 
into a great bay, with endless boulders and endless gulls 



Indians 71 

apon them — blackbacks and herring gulls. They made 
great uproar as I turned seaward on the half tide. The 
open sea was all of twenty miles away. Far away, just 
inside the coast line, the water horizon at the entrance of 
the bay was broken by a pointed conical island, at that 
distance nearly hull down. It was a marvelously calm, 
dreamy day, yet cool, such as only that coast knows. 
There were ducks in every bight, white-wing coots and 
sheldrakes; sea pigeons skurried about, and the only 
sound over the broad inlet, after the gulls had ceased 
their cries, was the recurring hum and spatter of wings. 
Near ten miles down was the Kudlituk, a landmark 
perhaps a thousand feet high; its northeast corner is 
square and rises perpendicularly from the talus to a 
great height. It is one of the least mistakable land- 
marks of tile region. A hundred white-backed eiders 
were sitting along its base on large boulders. As I 
came on they would jump off like bullfrogs, bound up 
again from the water and off on the wing. It was a 
funny, unbirdlike performance. Not one, I think, flew 
directly from his rock. 

As Opetik is chosen of the loons, so is this greater and 
even finer bay the place of that prince of his line, the 
eider. Around the rock points comes their grand rush, 
twenty or forty abreast, heads slightly tilted down and 
white backs gleaming in the sun. They keep to the 
rock shores, leaving the beaches of the upper bay to 
the commoner ducks and the geese of early fall. Later 
the eider seeks the far outer islands. Mainly his life 
is seaward; his northern title, Seaduck, bears he well. 

Before reaching the Kudlituk I had unknowingly 
passed John Voisey's house, a small affair. It was 
weathered well to invisibility, and moreover to have seen 



72 Labrador 

it I had to look backward and into the sun. He saw 
the canoe, but thought I must be an Indian and kept 
snug. He found out later that he had missed a white 
visitor, and the next year when I came along, not to 
take any chances of losing a caller, his little seaward 
gable had been painted red. No one on that coast 
means to lose any of the passing. 

Somewhere past Kudlituk the sun went down, the 
sky became dull, and darkish night came on. By ten, 
with sea breeze and tide opposing, it was tired, weary 
work getting on with a single paddle. The tides about 
Kudlituk are apt to worry a stranger; as nearly as I 
can understand them they chase themselves around and 
around the island, regardless of rules. It was eight 
when I left the rock, eleven when I landed on some 
smooth moss ground six or eight miles away. For an 
hour or two I strained my eyes to the intersection of a 
far point to port with a rock line farther away, to make 
out whether I was gaining or not. It took a long time, 
in the tidal bobble and breeze, to see any change at all. 
One is apt to work too long when there are only three or 
four hours of darkness. But supper and pipe and bed 
were good that night. The mosquitoes were not ; the 
salt water ones seem more desperately vicious than those 
of the high ground, though a trifle smaller. Protected 
by the smoke, I lay by the fire in great content for 
some time before turning in, and boiled the loon. 

With the morning of the 21st another calm, wonder- 
ful day came on. In a couple of easy miles I cleared 
the bay and could turn southward. The way had been 
simple until now, but although I knew that some twenty 
miles south were waters I had seen before, the way was 
by no means plain. To the east, beyond a few islands, 



Indians 73 

a water horizon with bergs showed there was only sea 
beyond. Southeastward indefinite passages led also to 
sea; obviously they were a last resort. Southward, 
where I wanted to go, a high, firm rock sky line, ten 
or twelve miles away, was continuous, with no hint 
of passage. While the weather lasted I could of course 
try the bays one by one for a way through, but my rate 
of speed was slow at best, and there might be all sorts 
of tide currents, as indeed there were. It was most on 
my mind that the weather could not safely be counted 
on, it was too fine to last. To be trapped in some deep 
bay for a week or two, unable to get out against the 
wind, would be rather stiff ; worse still to be driven up 
on one of the smaller islands; they looked waterless 
as the moon. A very moderate head wind would stop 
me, for a single paddle to a heavy canoe is futility itself 
against wind and sea. The water question need not 
have concerned me, for, as I came to know, there is 
sure to be a little anywhere. 

A good deal of physical wear goes with the first 
onset into such a trip. It usually happens that three 
stiffish days of lake-and-portage work are about as 
much as the person of ordinary town habits can do and 
not feel stale; the fourth day there is a falling off. 
Now the morning I passed out of Voisey's bay I had 
taken more wear out of myself for some days than the 
short mosquito-devilled nights could possibly make 
good. In fact he would be a good traveler who could 
keep up that sort of thing from fourteen to eighteen 
hours- a day on any terms, even without hurrying, 
But for me the temptation of those endless perfect days 
had been hard to resist, and I had done too much. It 
was the fourth day since I had seen a face; people 



74 Labrador 

began to seem a myth. How would Eskimo behave if 
I came to any? All was singularly beautiful, inspir- 
ing, but strange as another planet. 

The first island east was pretty high, so I held over 
to it and walked to the top for a look at the channels. 
Curiously, while I was walking I turned to speak to 
some one who was close over my left shoulder. Of 
course no one was there. The incident was repeated 
two or three times, without the least variation of the 
impression. Once on the water again my friend left 
me. 

Starving people who are walking continuously are 
apt to talk to imaginary persons, and some who get 
lost in the woods, even for a short time, find it hard 
to separate the real things from others. Before leav- 
ing home I had been seeing many people constantly, 
and the habit told. Now, the fourth day alone, I 
began to wish almost any sort of person would turn 
up. It may be well to say that my peculiar experience 
on the island never recurred, and during a good deal 
of solitary travel in succeeding years I was steadier, 
if anything, than when in company. 

Turning down the broad water which closes in near 
the site of the former mission station of Zoar, I was 
not long without more substantial society. Four or 
five grampuses were circling about two or three miles 
down; in the stillness I could soon hear the loud sigh 
they make on coming to the surface. Their backs are 
tremendously arched, almost like the rim of a large 
wheel. Not much of their length shows at a time, 
but more keeps coming as the first part disappears, 
until the effect of a revolving wheel is complete. 

I watched constantly for some tide movement, a 




SUMMER PTARMIGAN 




WINTER PTARMIGAN 



Indians 75 

difficult thing to detect in such wide waters. As the 
tide was falHng a set toward a bay would point to a 
passage through beyond; an outward flow might be 
indecisive. There seemed a faint showing in favor of 
keeping south, and I held that way. 

Before long one of the grampuses showed his back a 
hundred yards ahead, with a course which promised to 
take him quite near, and hoping for a shot I knelt with 
the rifle and waited. I wanted to see what kind of a 
beast a grampus was. Presently a hollow as of the 
palm of one's hand, but five or six feet across, appeared 
moving swiftly along, with the tip of a fin cutting along 
in the middle. The beast was in a good way to come 
up for a broadside shot at fifteen feet as it passed, and 
I made ready. But things did not go as they promised. 
At thirty feet ahead the fin swerved and came straight 
for the canoe. Desperately I dropped the rifle, rather 
uselessly seized the paddle and made a side dive. 
Grampuses are given to breaching, and although they 
are perfectly amiable, I was afraid that once under the 
canoe the beast would get excited and send everything 
into the air. It was a mile to shore and the water was 
ice water. Nothing happened; he must have gone 
silently down, but I was glad to be alone again. For 
a moment I had rather a sensation. They are big 
enough to do anything, often thirty feet long and stoutly 
built ; it is not a bad thing to knock on the canoe when 
they are nearer than one likes. The bay people do not 
care for actual contact with them, though their boats 
are fairly large. . 

Still another turn in affairs was coming. Soon, 
while moving absently along, I seemed to catch the 
sound of a far voice, away in the west. Turning that 



76 Labrador 

way for a time it came again, I must say it had an at- 
tractive sound, and keeping on a little I saw a black 
speck moving on the beach. This grew to be a black 
dog; then some trout puncheons came into view, a hu- 
man token, and as I landed an old Eskimo appeared and 
descended to the little beach. I got out and met him. 
He had little English and we had a hard time begin- 
ning. His name was Abel. 

" Come schooner? " 

" No, inland," I said, and pointed west. No one 
ever came from there, he knew, and he looked worried ; 
I was not telling the truth. Not much more was said. 
As we talked the tinkle of a tin kettle came from the 
canoe, and looking back I saw a large dog walking away 
with my boiled loon across his mouth, showing his side 
teeth at the other dogs, who were close along but did 
not dare to take hold. I was out of meat. 

Old Abel looked awhile into the new canoe, with its 
handsome varnished cedar lining, finally saying, " Fine 
kayak! " Presently came three or four women with a 
good catch of sea trout in a " fiat," a little dory-like 
skiff. It was their voices I had heard, behind the island, 
shouting and laughing about the net as the big trout 
splashed them. Three of them were Eskimo beyond 
disguise ; the other was not very dark and spoke English, 
though with effort and as if long disused. Her hus- 
band, old Abel's son,.Antone, was away at the post. 
Yes, there was a passage, a rattle, at the end of this 
water. They were uneasy, and soon went to split- 
ting the fish. I relinquished an unannounced plan of 
dining with them, but remarked that they ought to give 
me a fish, as their dog had taken my meat. " You can 
have two," with an inflection which meant, " if you will 



Indians 77 

only go away " ; but one six-pound trout was certainly 
enough. In an experienced way Mrs. Antone pricked 
its back with the point of a knife to test its fatness and 
quality. They need not have been afraid, their eleven 
dogs would have finished me in a moment. Rather 
soon I put off. Some way off they called out something 
about taking the little rattle, but I did not go back to talk 
it over. The stillness was suddenly broken, a little later, 
by a huge thunder sound from seaward, behind the 
islands. A silence of some seconds followed, then a 
rending, broken roar. A loud shout came from the 
Eskimo behind. For ten minutes the affair went on, 
an invisible phenomenon of great impressiveness in the 
peace and stillness of the day. It was only a berg 
foundering outside, but the air was so transparent to 
sound at the time that its being at least two or three 
miles away seemed incredible. I would have given 
much to see it happen. A Newfoundlander has told 
me that once a wave from a foundering berg in one 
of their great bays washed a man off a rock seven miles 
away! 

I had gathered a dry pole from a beach somewhere 
back, leaving the roots on in default of an axe. Now, 
with a slight breeze, I used it for a mast, the luggage 
piled effectively upon the spreading roots ; but the breeze 
died. At the end of the bay were high rocks and a pas- 
sage a few hundred yards wide. Passing along peace- 
fully in glassy water I suddenly noticed that the shores 
were flying back at the rate of some fourteen miles an 
hour, and almost at once the place became torn by most 
astonishing cross-currents and whirlpools. Just ahead 
two whirlpools lay like a pair of spectacles. I skimmed 
the edges of both. Nothing but the elusive model of 



78 Labrador 

the boat, with a bit of help at the right time, saved the 
day. She was a living waterfowl in such water,. that 
boat. Everything thrashed about for a few hundred 
yards, when the canoe shot out suddenly into still water, 
almost at right angles to my course of beginning. 

The day seemed to be holding out well as to inciden- 
tals. This was the Big Rattle, where a large salt vv-ater 
lake, several miles across, has to fill by a narrow, bent 
channel in a very short time. In extreme tides the 
manifestations of the place are amazing. The Little 
Rattle is an inoffensive passage near by on the east, 
fairly swift at times but never acrobatic. 

There is one other channel leading into the lake, small 
and dry at low tide. There the inflow was coming in so 
strong that I went ashore and boiled the big trout while 
waiting for the current to ease. It was my first ample, 
deliberate meal for some days. But one cannot travel 
hard and eat correspondingly. Once in a while when 
steady on the road a great meal may do, but one must 
not let out that way too often. 

The rest of the day was true to type for the region; 
breezes wandered this way and that way, ahead, behind, 
and across, with calms between. Miles from shore, 
sometimes, a calm spot would be well taken up by mos- 
quitoes. My gloves were an inch short, and my wrists 
arrived at a curious sandpaper complexion; they must 
have had a thousand bites in the course of a week. 

By eleven that night I fetched up on the south side 
of Opetik, not far from the house of George. It was 
hard to find a place to sleep, on the steep rocks, but there 
was wood, and supper over I tried a slope of small 
stones, like crusher stone, but found myself slipping 
down again and again most uncomfortably. It was a 



Indians 79 

miserable place. Mosquitoes, one at a time, managed 
to get under my net. About one o'clock I looked out 
and dawn was gaining in the east; out of patience I 
threw off the blanket and net. There was no use trying 
to sleep and I started a fire, sitting over it. When the 
smoke rose and parted the mosquitoes I fell forward, 
instantly asleep, but wrenched myself awake before my 
face struck the firewood. For twenty minutes this tor- 
ture went on in really painful recurrence; later, after a 
bite and some strong tea, I paddled slowly over to 
George's, a couple of miles, feeling in truth pretty 
slack. George heard the dogs — it was three o'clock • — 
and put his head out. I had felt a touch of responsi- 
bility about him, he might have had an accident and not 
reached home. 

He had not had a happy time of it. Reaching Opetik 
river that day he had made a smoke, the neighborhood 
signal for a boat. The Edmundses thought we had 
come back and were camping there, so paid no attention 
as we had the canoe. That night it rained, the night 
I got under the canoe on Side brook, and George had 
to tough it out. It was afternoon the next day, I 
think, before he was taken over. When the neighbors 
heard his story they were near the lynching point at 
what he had done, being themselves of a different sort, 
and forseeing, moreover, a bad job hunting me up. 
Mrs. G., another sort too, was relieved to see me. With 
George himself I had Httle talk; he said something 
about having gone along if his boots had not been thin. 

Mrs. G. did me as well as she could ; after a second 
breakfast I got something of a nap, but had been too 
long without sleep and soon turned out again. 

It had been reported from the post that Cotter was 



80 Labrador 

going to Spracklin's with his little schooner the next 
morning; accordingly Johnny Edmunds and George 
were going down at once with trout. In time we 
started; it was hot and calm, and though we rowed 
and sculled as we could it was slow going. I missed 
a good black bear on the way. It is possible that the 
jacketed bullet rode the very oily lands in the barrel 
and went high, for I never held better. The disgrace 
of the episode was unpleasant. At midnight our pro- 
spects were bad, with fifteen miles to go. Then I 
slumped, done up, stretched myself on a pile of pickled 
trout, and slept real sleep again at last. It was certainly 
time. Once I woke enough to feel the boat careened 
and driving at a great pace. A north wind had come 
on, by five we were at the Inlet. Cotter had not started 
and there was time to eat and get ready before putting 
oK with him. We had a blue and white run, above and 
below, to the Cape Harbor — a late start and an early 
landing. There is such a thing as having had enough 
of fray, and through the trip I sat below deck with 
Cotter in full content, without looking out that I re- 
member. 

Things had happened well; after all, there is some- 
thing in making the most of favoring weather. In a 
white northwester a canoe is not the thing among these 
high shores, for one can never tell where gusts will 
come from. The tide crotches bobble and kick up into 
three-cornered seas ; in funnel passages the waves drive 
up yeasty, and ugly drives of wind shoot out from the 
steeper rocks. It is best for little craft to keep very 
near such shores, or very far away. 

The Cape harbor where we landed is west from 
Fanny's, divided from it by a thousand yards of easy 



Indians 81 

low ground. The distance around outside is several 
miles, for Fanny's looks east and the Cape harbor west 
and north. Cotter had come down for salt which 
Spracklin had stored for him at the Cape. 

The Spracklins had fish; namely, cod. Nothing is 
fish to a Newfoundlander but cod — cod alone. Sal- 
mon are salmon, trout are trout, the same with herring, 
caplin, and the rest ; but to him cod only is Fish. He 
may go fishing for any of these, for almost anything 
that swims, for to him life is fishing, but he would 
hardly use the word unqualified of anything but cod. 
Never intimate to him that his Fish is not the most 
game of all its kind — indeed its tail kicks the surface 
in acres sometimes, and it will take a fly — nor that 
the rock-cod is much above the sculpin. 

The great beds of fish which once lay on the surface 
in sheltered waters are only a tradition now ; either there 
are fewer fish, or the traps cut them off outside; the 
wholesale work of the cod trap has had its effect in 
one way or the other. In old days a buoy or box 
thrown over would be attacked with vigor by the fish. 
Caplin were scarce; now, the balance of nature dis- 
turbed, their enemy absent, they swarm the waters at 
times, their eggs pile in windrows on the beaches. 
Salt, enough salt for the fish, was the only concern of 
the bay people then, the fish were sure and came well 
up into the bays. They are intercepted now with the 
salmon that used to come to the rivers. The people 
still have the rock-cod, largely a winter fish. The 
locked bays of winter are safe from the schooners. 

So with the sea birds of the old days, the myriads 
that filled the air in the time of Audubon. The 
number of schooners that go north has crept from 



82 ' Labrador 

a few hundred up to three thousand, each with 
several guns; their crews, men and boys, are intimate 
with the habits of the creature Hfe of the coast; Httle 
is wilhngly spared. They know where to find the 
eggs; they can handle well the heavy seal guns. But 
at least nothing is wasted ; they use all, and betimes the 
' inexhaustible north " replenishes somewhat the supply. 

The Spracklins had a few hundred quintals (said 
"kintle") of fish, taken in the last few days. Cotter 
hurried back with his load of salt, for his schooner was 
leaking, and drowned salt runs away. The weather 
turned totally bad (vide moral for travelers : make the 
m,ost of good weather), and Skipper Tom being short 
handed I did what I could on the fish stage. My vaca- 
tion time was fairly up, three to five weeks was what 
I had counted on; it would be nearer seven before I 
could get home. The mailboat was about due. 

My function at the stage was " tending table," pitch- 
forking fish from the pen to the table, also wheeling 
away the barrows of split fish to be piled, but though 
mine was the humblest role of all, even at that I won 
more in the way of appetite and ability to sleep nights 
en my folded lance-net bed than of distinction. " There 
is tending and tending," said one of the crew apropos of 
my efforts. They not only wanted me to keep the fish 
coming, but to place them so as to be conveniently seized 
— reasonably enough. Their whole season's catch may 
come in a few days. Then the crew works pretty well 
around the clock. Ellen, the young woman who 
cooked, and well indeed, for ten persons, who kept the 
house clean and in order, and did washing, and kept 
neat, and came with a run and a jump when called, also 
worked at the fish table evenings and at odd times. 



Indians 83 

Stout little Jane, beaming with wily Spracklin's praise, 
stood for incredible hours enveloped in her big apro-n, 
cutting and tearing, cutting and tearing, stopping 
scarcely for meals. Four hours' sleep the crew were 
getting then. Poor Spracklin, his arms and wrists set 
with fish boils, " pups " in the vernacular, slept with his 
bandaged arms raised clear of all touch, in his face the 
look of the overworn. Yet all were cheerful ; the fish 
were on. Many a fisherman on shore or schooner sees 
no fish. Then they live scantily, biscuit and tea, bis- 
cuit and tea, and not the best; their little pork is 
precious. We see them in passing on the mailboat. 
They are strong men, but their eyes grow absent as the 
season wanes, and their women's. No wonder they 
hunt the islands. 

The foul weather lasted three or four days ; ice came 
in, the nets were damaged, and it became too rough 
for the fishing. I turned to outrigging the canoe for 
rowing, using for a rowlock a single wood pin with a 
rope withe, the Newfoundlander's shooting rig. The 
arrangement is silent, the oars can be dropped along- 
side without going adrift, and they row well. The pins 
were forty-four inches apart, a fair spread for seven 
and a half foot oars; these last I got out of long oars 
of Spracklin's that were past use, making their blades 
as narrow as four inches, for the sea work. 

That canoe, eighteen feet by thirty-three inches, could 
be pushed up to a speed of near or quite six miles an 
hour when so rigged, carrying a hundred pounds of bag- 
gage; and with the rower sitting five or six inches from 
the bottom, his back close against the middle bar, would 
take irregular and trying seas in a perfectly unbelievable 
way. The fishermen were naturally skeptical about 



84! Labrador 

canoes for coast travel, and had me on their minds ; no 
one in such places likes to see foolish risks taken; Skip- 
per Jim, in particular, made predictions. But later on 
I happened to be outside one day when the crew were 
hauling a trap. It was true " codfish weather "• — fog, 
the wind on the shore, the air rawness itself. A sea 
was coming in, making with the backwash from the 
rocks a very broken " lop." Toward taking a camera 
snap at the operation going on I threw a short line over 
a pin in the other boat and let my craft pivot about as 
she liked. Spracklin looked my way now and then, but 
said nothing. Going back I led them in, of course, for 
they were loaded. At dinner something was said about 
the canoe, and I remarked to Spracklin, " You see she 
will do almost what a dory will." " She'll do what a 
dory won't! " he returned, and no one bothered about 
me after that. 

As the days went we wondered about the mailboat; 
she might be on the bottom. When at last the weather 
turned fine the invitation of it became too much, and of 
an afternoon I rowed for Davis Inlet. Beyond the 
Cape islands is a stretch of flat shoals, and before I 
quite got my bearings a long sweeper gathered, broke, 
and ran by with a wicked scream. Anything but flat 
shoals and a swell on a falling tide! These occasional 
reminders are chastening. But it was a different matter 
now from working slowly along with one paddle, the 
butt of everything that came. Now the sure ability to 
pull away from any lee shore, to drive, if slowly, into a 
white-topped sea, put a new face on things. One needs 
to feel the master in these matters. There was no more 
wondering whether I was gaining or going back, no 
more desperate holding to the gusts that strove to 




SPRACKLIN 




COD 



Indians 85 

broach. Now only the easy swing to the oars; there 
was no swerving, the canoe ran true. It was singular 
how slight a shifting of a pack fore or aft with the feet 
counteracted the wind push to the right or left. The 
canoe did the rest, meeting, balancing, lifting over, a 
creature water bred. She passed into other hands when 
I left that year, and was finally wrecked. Never was 
her like. 

There was a drawback, a real disadvantage : one could 
not see ahead. Ducks and sea pigeons squttered from 
under the bow, seals sank silently and unperceived ; gulls 
moved on and kept away. I missed their companion- 
ship, and sometimes the meal they might have furnished. 
One has to turn and look ahead now and then for shoals 
and landmarks, but the neck rebels as the hours go on, 
the rhythm of the oars in calm days makes the thoughts 
drowse and drift far away, the low, slow swell makes 
all for dreams. Well if the ear catch chuck of wave 
on rock or ice in time; sooner or later a reminding 
scrape or thump is sure to come. 

One needs to see ahead; going backward is a crude 
way. For years I had it in mind that bow facing oars 
should be the thing, and too late, in 19 lo, tried them 
out in home waters. They were the thing indeed ; they 
were as fast as any oars, as easy to use, and I rued the 
years I had needlessly gone without them. 

It was calm throughout the day. Four or five gram- 
puses circled about, but not near enough for intimacy; 
they are semi-solitary, for though common enough I 
have never seen more than five in a bay at once, and 
these scattered about. Most others of the whale kind 
seem inclined to go in families. A dense flock of 
" ticklers," the charming kittiwakes, came close about 



86 Labrador 

my shoulders. If the fishermen knock one down the 
others stay close about and are easy victims. They 
hover about the fish schools, indeed the occasional flick 
of a cod's tail explained their presence now. According 
to the fishermen it is small, oily bubbles rising from the 
fish that the ticklers are after. How these are pro- 
duced, though they may be from the caplin and other 
prey seized and mangled by the cod, does not certainly 
appear. 

It is the sounds, perhaps, more than the sights, that 
rouse one dreaming along through the spaces of these 
endless mirrored days. They simulate more familiar 
ones. The raven's first croak may come through the 
rippling of the dividing bow as the distant bark of a 
dog that is not; the "wailing waby's lonely cries," 
from desolate bays, as the voice of some forsaken ani- 
mal afar. From somewhere ahead comes a perfect 
human hail, " Ah, there ! " — and one turns involunta- 
rily to see who has called, but it is only a pair of the 
great blackbacks that have launched from some high 
nesting place and come in apprehension to meet and 
protest their misgivings. Strange it is to have revealed 
the undreamed pairing-time vocabulary of this beauti- 
ful but silent winter visitor of our shores. From my 
diary, " The great saddle-back gulls hailed from a dis- 
ance, anxious for their young on the islands, and wheel- 
ing over with a surprising vocabulary of protesting 
and ejaculatory sounds : * Aaa-ha ! — Aaali ! — Guk ! 
' — Kuk ! — Huh ! — Ooh ! ' all in a distressed voice, 
harsh yet plaintive. They might be saying, ' We can't 
do anything if you come! We can't do anything, we 
can't help it, but we can't help protesting! Ooh! ' and 
their careworn cries ^o on. 



Indians 87 

" They are beautiful large gulls, white below and 
soft black gray above; one would never expect their 
forlorn intonations." 

There is something wrong, or at least depressing, in 
the cries of almost all the gulls. One has to get used 
to them. Serenity itself to the eye their voices are as 
of spirits broken for their sins. 

" Dense schools of caplin (cape-lin) sometimes 
wrinkled the surface. They are much like smelts, and 
may be dipped up readily with a hand net. Cod dis- 
gorge them on the stage and in the boats, as do sea 
trout. They are more slender and delicate than smelt, 
as wanting substance by comparison. The fishermen 
speak of their spawning in the kelp along the shore 
and of seeing the spawn at a distance. 

" Once or twice I took to the paddle for a change, but 
rowing was much more effective and less tiring. The 
canoe is too large for one paddle. . . . Toward the 
inlet the tide helped; it was 7.45 when I pulled up to 
the dock and surprised Cotter. A great supper of sea 
trout and bake apple (cloudberry) jam, matched only 
by my appetite, after merely a couple of biscuit on the 
way up. Both Cotter and Spracklin have very good 
spruce beer. C.'s ship, the Pelican, is not in, and he is 
in great fret about it. No Indians yet. 

" In the morning some one announced Indians before 
we were up. There were eight of them, from George 
River, Three or four are tall, good men, of strong 
Cree type. Most wear deerskin coats, but some have 
cloth shirts over them, covering also the skin breech- 
cloth. The visible skin coats of the others show a 
painted pattern around the boarders. Their inner shirts 
are of young or unborn caribou, with the short, fine hair 



88 Labrador 

turned In. They are inclined to be chilly in our raw 
coast air, the interior is warmer. The post finds shelter 
and provisions for them while here, the latter no trifling 
matter, for they are apt to eat little the last days coming 
in. Cotter says they ate twenty-two pounds of hard 
bread to-day, besides pork. 

" My dealing with them is rather difficult on the 
whole. Their intonation is high and nasal, and their 
dialect peculiar. They understand my Montagnais talk 
rather fairly, a few words at a time, but I do not attempt 
anything ambitious. The camera they are shy about; 
one of them I got only by snapping from the side, un- 
known to him." The others were better, small plugs 
of tobacco modified their objections, and in the end I 
had them all, in some sort. Most of our talk was about 
the country. Pleasant old Katshiuas, "whose name 
nevertheless means " always cross,"' gave me a good 
map of their route to the coast, but in some mysterious 
way it disappeared later and I never saw it again. 
Kamoques, " Porcupine eater," also made one, but it 
was vague. They are war}?- about strangers. 

Then it was that I learned from Katshiuas that the 
Indian House Lake of Low's map was only a narrow 
affair, no wider than the run in front of the post, and 
my long-cherished vision of a broad, imposing water, 
possibly larger even than as shown conjecturally on 
the map, and the best objective for a season's trip in 
all Labrador, vanished once for all. As a feature of 
more than ordinary interest the lake departed from my 
mind. 

K. told me quite a little about the country. There 
was wood enough along the route. Once out of the 
Assiwaban and up the '''' TsJiishkatinau kapitagan," the 



Indians 89 

high portage, here his arm stretched almost vertically 
— " It is high ! high ! " — there was no stream work, all 
was lake and portage,' — " pemishkau, kapitagan," 
paddle and portage, all the way. Mistinipi, " Great 
Lake," was the largest water. There were plenty 
of caribou on the George that year. " They are every- 
where ! " Katshiuas told me truly, in all things. 

The first impression that the Naskapi make on one 
is apt to be vivid and a little mixed. Their irrespon- 
sible thin legs and bare thighs, and their horsetail 
hair, are decidedly not of our world, though the latter 
is generally docked at the shoulders. They have a 
nasal twang, which in the excitement of arrival, and 
at such times they are not impassive, becomes almost 
a whine. Their travel clothing is nondescript and 
dingy; though as to this, again, they know how to do 
better, and in new white skin clothing are wholly pictu- 
resque. But as untamed aborigines. Stone Age people, 
they lay hold of one. The look in their eyes is the look 
of the primitive man of the open. 

Yet it is not too easy to picture from them a primi- 
tive man of our own strain. Their unmodified raciality, 
which impresses one strongly at first meeting, is pro- 
bably as far from our own as that of any high race in 
the world. To a white person not used to them, their 
presence becomes easily trying. It puts one into a 
curious tension which becomes uncomfortable, one 
wants to go away, shortly, for readjustment. This 
is mainly, I think, a matter of genius; from us they are 
apart beyond most children of earth. Soon after they 
came I touched one of them with my finger and he 
shrank as if stung. Among themselves even they keep 
more apart than white men do. Restlessly they stepped 



90 Labrador 

about, keen eyed. They were not used to level boards. 

I had meant to go back at midday to take up the un- 
willing task of catching the steamer, but the temptation 
to have more of the Indians was too much and I waited 
through the afternoon. Quiet had settled upon the 
place, there could be little trading until the Pelican 
should come w^ith her cargo. The strangeness of the 
Indians wore away somewhat, and their voices fell 
agreeably. Their ordinary tones fall in almost indis- 
tinguishably with the rhythmic sounds of the open, the 
wind and running water and lip of the waves. After 
all, we had subjects in common, and talked as best we 
could of these things. 

We of the post had kept something of a lookout for 
the steamer during the day without result, but after 
seven a plain smoke appeared beyond the horizon in the 
usual route of the mailboat. She would naturally go 
to Nain and be back possibly by noon next day. Thus 
I had time enough to get to Fanny's, and without much 
risk might have waited until morning, but there was the 
old question of weather and it was calm now. As it 
turned out I should have fared worse to have waited. 

Cotter and others about urged me to stay; the tide 
was wrong, night was no time to travel alone, I could 
start early. But I was stiff about it, arguing that it 
was now calm, and would be until daylight, but that 
fog comes in the morning, and the fog brings the wind. 
There was no hurry; we had a farewell supper and it 
was nine when I left. The Indians gathered at the 
landing, looking rather serious. They do not like night 
travel overwell. AH the unseen powers are active then. 
Travel by night alone is the worst of all. 

For a while I used the paddle, keeping close inshore 



Indians 91 

out of the current, then took to the oars. I had thinned 
the blades to perfect balance in C.'s shop, and tightened 
the withes into silence ; things went well. For six miles 
the current was wrong, dying out finally ; there was then 
no swell to speak of. By eleven the afterglow in the 
north was faint, but was replaced by northern lights, 
shifting and wavering in a long, flat arch, and at times 
as bright as moonlight. I watched the sky for signs 
of wind, for the landing places along were not too good, 
and the only good shelter would be far down one of the 
two large bays. Half way across the first bay the swell 
began to increase and sound heavy on the islands east- 
ward. Edging farther away from them, toward the 
mainland, a strong uproar of surf came from the south 
point of the bay. By this time it was midnight, and 
dark save for the stars and the brighter periods of the 
north sky. Saddle-back gulls wailed once or twice 
from their islands, sounding familiar and friendly — in 
truth, they sounded a good deal more friendly than the 
roaring shores. The noise, the darkness, and the un- 
usual heave of the sea were getting to be impressive. 
Night doings take a little extra hardihood. Before long 
I lost the identity of the shore lines and became uncer- 
tain of my course. The tide was passing out from the 
deep bays, and once without landmarks it became doubt- 
ful where I was getting to. I had edged for the main- 
land, yet might have been going seaward by set of tide, 
which in any event prevented my taking a straight 
course and holding to it. It was confusing, and after 
listening to the surf awhile and remembering the shal- 
low points that might break at any time and bring on 
an ice-water interruption, I concluded that open sea was 
the place and pulled for it. The oars would bring me 



92 Labrador 

back; it would have been doubtful business with only 
a paddle. By one o'clock I felt sure I was off Lane's 
Bay and was easier as the roar of the west point of the 
bay receded. Cotter had given me a half loaf of bread, 
and now and then I gnawed at it, shifting off my seat 
into the bottom of the canoe for change of position. 
Rowing in so small a craft as a canoe one has to keep 
in exactly the same position, and gets stiff in time. 
When the sound of breakers came equally from east and 
west I supposed I was off the middle of the bay, an'd lay 
to, now munching bread and now rowing a little for 
circulation, waiting for light. There was still no wind. 
A grampus snorted about, and now and then I knocked 
well on the gunwale, in the interest of fair play. 

Dawn came late. A heavy bank of fog not far sea- 
ward shut back the early light. At that sea'son the sun 
creeps along almost level under the horizon during the 
early hours, and heavy cloud or fog is very effective in 
keeping back the day. Fog had been working in from 
seaward for several hours, a dense black wall, rising 
higher and higher. By the time I could see the landmark 
hill at the Cape harbor, some six miles away, the fog be- 
gan to touch the top of it. Then I rowed fast, to get 
over the wide shoals before the fog reached them. 
Those shoals were what I had held back for in the night. 
With such -an unusual swell and a falling tide it would 
not do to wander along over them at random. They 
were the serious feature of the trip. 

It was near five when I made out the Cape hill and 
started past the shoals. There was wind now, from 
east. Things were going well enough, when suddenly 
a coming -swell rose high and stood for an instant as if 
looking down at me. There was not much to be done, 




KAMOQUES 



Indians 93 

but I threw the bow. up to make the best of it, twisting 
the boat head on. As luck would have it the wave 
passed, and the usual two more nearly as large, without 
breaking, as follows from my writing this, and I swung 
back into the trough again. If ever any one pulled to 
get away from -a place it was then, and she was a wonder 
in the trough, that unnamed canoe of 1903, like a snake 
she would run down the hollows. But the look of that 
standing wave, hanging over in the dark rough morning, 
is one of my Labrador memories. Anything but flat 
shoals and a swell, on a falling tide ! 

The fog swirled in thick as I reached sheltered water. 
It was no matter. I slapped down my pocket compass 
into the bottom, of the canoe before it could change its 
course, and went on well, though it was blind work at 
the end of the harbor. 

All creatures come close in such fog. Twenty or 
thirty eiders flew almost aboard. Tickles had been all 
about as the fog came on, and another bunch of eiders 
came very close. 

Laying out the canoe, rather as a friend never to be 
seen again, I did the two miles and more across the 
island to Spracklin's with a pack which felt heavy. I 
had no doubt of getting the steamer. During the latter 
part of the night I heard her whistle, at Fanny's, and 
took it that she was of¥ north for Nain. To my amaze- 
ment Spracklin met me in the doorway, with, rather 
brusquely, " You've lost your passage ! " I was so 
dazed, having had no misgivings at all in the matter, and 
being sleepy and dense after the doings of the last 
twenty-four hours, that I could not really sense the 
situation until after breakfast. The mailboat had 
passed north early the day before, unseen by us at the 



94 Labrador 

inlet, and had left, going south, at the time I heard the 
whistle. What steamer it was that made the smoke we 
saw from the post we have never known. For the 
next fifteen hours, however, disappointment did not 
keep me awake much. 

By the time I had slept up a spell of bad weather was 
on. The storm out at sea which had pushed the night 
swell up on the coast had followed in. The surf about 
the exposed Cape had been heavy through the night, un- 
usually so. Spracklin, of course, heard it, and although 
there was no wind whatever until early morning, he 
always imagined from the noise he had heard that a 
gale had been blowing all night. He really believed it ; 
I could never quite shake it out of him, and for years he 
told in good faith the story of my night trip by canoe, 
" in a wild storm alone." He made a good yarn of it, 
if a hard one for me to live up to. Many a pretty fame, 
it may be, has no better basis. But to travel conven- 
iently by night in such places one needs to know the 
shores better than I did, not to speak of shoals and 
currents. Mere wind can only bother and force one to 
land, but shoals and sweepers can be the de'il's own. 

Spracklin always did have imagination, and more. 
So far as he himself was concerned, wind and sea only 
stirred his blood. One of the pictures of him that I 
like, though I did not see the happening, is as coming in 
through the harbor entrance low down with fish, a fol- 
lowing wave filling the boat, the two Labradorians 
climbing the mast, but Spracklin remaining unmoved at 
the tiller. He finally brought his load of fish alongside 
the stage, the water up to his mouth. He could not 
swim. 

One year I came along just after he had had an expe- 



Indians 95 

rience crossing to Lane's Bay alone in his jack, a deep, 
stout boat of some tons burden, over waters already des- 
cribed. Near, to the south, was that stronghold of 
yEolus, Windy Tickle. From here, perhaps, came the 
whirlwind which tore the sea and flailed off his masts 
in an instant, he as helpless as if in an explosion. For 
once in his life he made that quick mental conge of 
things earthly which wayfarers of less firm clay have 
made with smaller cause. The boat lived, how he knew 
not, and he limped home under such rig of remnants as 
he could improvise. The sea had betrayed him at last, 
his face and voice showed it. 

Things were not too well at Fanny's. The fishing fell 
off with the storm, and did not much recover ; the total 
catch had been less than five hundred quintals. I was 
sorry for the people ; they deserved more than they could 
possibly get. Then Spracklin's trap had to come out, 
for some reason, and Jim's likewise, for a two-pointed 
berg blew in and cut it up badly. Pieces of the berg 
came into the harbor at night, one so large that it 
seemed perfectly impossible for it to have come through 
the narrow, entrance. Now there was " no twine in the 
water " ; the fisherman's dark day had come. By this 
time the wear of round-the-clock work had begun to 
show on the crew. Ellen was the worse for the pace, 
but kept us going somehow. Little Jane was still work- 
ing like a tiger on the stage, for there were some fish 
ahead in the pens and bag nets when the traps gave out. 
I was about the stage too, for more than exercise, com- 
ing to see that forking and loading are really work when 
long continued. My reward, the particular bright spot, 
as I look back, was Ellen's piled plates of " heads and 
sounds," better even than the fish proper; and this is 



96 Labrador 

much to say, for all Newfoundlanders know how to 
deal with Fish and at their hands and in their several 
ways of getting it up it is always good. Sunday break- 
fast, where fishing goes on, is ever brewis, " fish and 
bruise." The fish part is well enough, I was wont to 
pick it out very contentedly; but my share of the soppy 
hardbread which constitutes bruise generally went to 
Spracklin's hens. 

Storms from sea, after the fish are in, blow them in- 
shore up the bays, where they fatten and come back by 
September. The thick-tailed ones are picked out for 
the table, as being best conditioned. We had two small 
salmon before the nets were damaged, a change and a 
treat, but they pall on one after two or three meals, 
unlike Fish. 

Save for Ellen's cooking everything was a little out 
of joint; the wind was truly east. Water being scarce, 
a common occurrence in the islands, it had to be brought 
from the hill in a hand-barrow tank. Lest the blue time 
should extend itself to my personal interests, I took a 
turn across the island one day and weighted the canoe 
with more stones, though it was doing well as it was. 
A run of bad luck in such a place is a thing to make 
one wary. The fishermen are apt to regard special 
misfortunes as punishments for lapses of conduct, par- 
ticularly Sabbath-breaking. Spracklin insisted that 
Skipper Jim's trouble with the ice came from having 
straightened out his trap the Sunday before. 

This was the rawest black weather of the summer. 
The wind came straight from the Greenland ice-cap 
and Melville Bay, across some hundreds of miles of 
berg-bearing sea. The end came after some days. 
Marvelous is the change from one of these dark, cold 



Indians 97 

periods to mild calm sunshine, cheering the light on rock 
and dying surf. Unchained from the mailboat incubus 
I was soon off on the old shimmering road to the Inlet, 
taking in the Labrador air as naturally as the creatures 
of the place. These were all about; grampuses that 
roved across the wake and blew ; black -backs that 
launched out and hailed " Ah-there " ; kittiwakes in flut- 
tering flocks ; caplin, and the flicking cod. Inspiring 
were the daylight and the shining folk of air and sea 
after the doubting night voyage that had been. Ah, the 
lighted day ! Chaos and night are much one to sightless 
man; almost all of the other creatures, they of the finer 
senses, if not the higher, see better than man when night 
is down. 

A far crying, as of some creature of fox-like size, 
came from distant islands seaward. I could imagine 
it running up and down in the desolation. Later I 
knew it for the waby,^ the red-throated loon. 

Half way along was Sam Bromfield coming from 
the post, with such news as there was. The Pelican 
was in, and more Indians. The post people had been 
speculating about m,e, seeing the sea and fog come on, 
but concluded that I would probably get out of the 
trouble in some way. Sam had my rifle on his mind, 
but I could not promise it to him then. He gave me 
a couple of sticks for spars, but my breeze never came; 
and worse, the tide was wrong in the run. 

The day was well along before I landed on the post 

.beach, where a dozen tall Indians stood waiting upon 

the wharf. Ashimagahish ^ was one, the chief. 

" Quay! Quay! " we saluted, in the way of the Cree 

tribes. After I landed he gave a shout and the others 

1 Said Wawby. 2 Said Ashimarganish. 



98 Labrador 

surrounded the loaded canoe, picked it up lightly and 
put it up on the wharf • — a friendly act. 

Eighteen more Indians had come, there were twenty- 
six in all. Some would have counted as good men any- 
where, and there were several handsome boys. We 
were acquainted now, and they humanized a good 
deal ; matters of race appeared less insuperable than 
before. I found it easier to talk with the older men, 
perhaps they had seen more of such occasions, but age 
seeks its level. 

The Pelican was anchored out in the run when I 
arrived. Cotter was aboard, and I had supper on shore 
alone. About dark he came hunting me up at the men's 
quarters, where I was sitting in with the Indians, and 
took me off, seeming a little upset until we were settled 
in the house. He was excited at leave of absence in 
the fall, it meant a winter in London and Edinboro'. 
He had never been over, and naturally the prospect 
was gilded; his mind was already there, and my talk 
of things near had little response. 

So it always is with the younger Hudson's Bay 
Company men after leave is granted. A young Cana- 
dian of the service, with relations in England, showed 
the same excitement as Cotter in his preparations. 
The people of the posts ask very simply about things 
of the world, and so this young man, though he had 
once been to school in a large Canadian city. The 
talk had all to be upon London and the way of things 
there, and above all upon clothes. Cost entered little, 
for these people beyond the money line all feel passing 
rich. Their salaries are small, but, willy nilly, in their 
wantless life they can scarcely help saving. The total 
sum in a lifetime can only be small as the outer world 



Indians 99 

goes, but the financial tide is always rising. One day 
they emerge into the world and realize its scale of 
living. 

One ought to have letters of introduction in going 
to a Hudson's Bay Company post. Now I suffered 
a disadvantage in not having them. The rules are 
rather strict about putting strangers into relation with 
the Indians and the hunting country. The good people 
of the post had placed themselves in a doubtful posi- 
tion by doing what they had, and they had now become 
doubtful lest I meant to set up in trade with their 
Indians. Their doubts were not very farfetched; they 
saw that I was an old hand, my outfit was untourist- 
like, and I had more use of the Indian language than 
any one along the shore. Among the shore people 
there had been abundant speculation as to my purposes 
from the first. They were shrewdly sure that I must 
be either looking for minerals or intending to trade. 
The Newfoundlanders believed I was after gold; 
Spracklin indeed begged me to let him in on what I 
might find. It was announced in the St. John papers 
one year that we had found gold in paying quantities 
and were going to develop it iri a large way. The 
shore folk, however, held the fur theory. 

Until now the Hudson's Bay Company people had 
kept a steady head. There had even been an under- 
standing that when the Pelican had come and gone, 
and the Indians were off, some one of them would make 
a trip inland with me, if I was still there to go. One 
of these people had once been a hundred miles inland, 
as he reckoned it, by dog train, with William Edmunds 
and two Southern Indians. They had gone up river 
from Opetik Bay, due west ; this I suspect was compass 



100 Labrador 

west, really almost southwest, and the distance, two and 
a half days of good sledging, was probably less than 
was thought. The coast distances hold out well — are 
based on the sea mile, perhaps, the " long sea mile " of 
John Silver and Treasure Island. Inland miles are 
another matter, they grow shorter and shorter as the 
shoreman's home places and inseparable salt water fall 
behind. What turned the Hudson's Bay Company 
party back was Indians, not snowshoe tracks or ima- 
ginary Indians, but the very men they were with. For 
some reason best known to themselves they announced 
to the outsiders that they did not want them to go any 
farther into the country and actually threatened vio- 
lence. Our white man was disposed to be militant, 
but William's enthusiasm fell away and they turned 
back. This may have been well ; it was then not so 
very long since some of the northern Indians had set 
out to rush Davis Inlet post, being denied what they 
asked. 

The projected trip inland was now off, of course, 
I being a doubtful person. The feasibility of making 
an arrangement with the Indians was also lessened, for 
their keen observation had not missed the change of 
atmosphere, and they are not apt to take much trouble 
for a person of doubtful standing among his own 
people. Whether it was the prevailing talk of the shore 
people, or, more likely, the councils of cautious old 
Captain Gray, of the Pelican, that upset things, I never 
knew. The blocking of Cotter's vacation into the 
country may have been partly due to William Edmunds. 
The journey was a reconnoissance toward a possible 
inland trading post. As William's best perquisite was 
the boating of Indians from Opetik to Davis Inlet 



Indians 101 

at a dollar each, his interest would be against the 
project. It was generally thought that he had in- 
trigued with the Indians against this enterprise. It 
remains, however, that to the present year 1920 they 
have allowed no white person but myself and occasional 
countrymen to enter. In 191 5 they ejected a party 
summarily. 

With whatever of cross-currents the days that 
followed this fourth arrival at the post were sufficiently 
unvexed and full of interest. Indians were every- 
where, the old Hudson's Bay people and the shore folk 
always had something to say, and my note book grew, 
if less than it ought. The oldest of the Hudson's Bay 
Company people, Mr. Dickers, in his active days a 
carpenter in the service, had been long at Fort Chimo 
on Ungava Bay. The second generation, John and 
James, were the active men here at Davis Inlet now, 
the latter a cooper, who made the rows of handsome 
barrels that the sea trout were shipped in, while John 
was general right-hand man of the post. They were 
Scotch, almost of course, being of the Hudson's Bay 
Company. I ought to have saved more from these 
people's talk than I did. The elder Dickers had lived 
in the romantic period of the North, in the days when 
fur was all and Indians came and went over the wide 
North as they never will again; yet I, young when 
Ballantine's tales were young, and Dick Prince and 
Dog Crusoe and Chimo and Ungava were stirring 
names, have little to tell. What questions I should 
have asked! They spoke mainly of the Eskimo. 
There were inland Eskimo, little people, who came to 
Chimo from the northwest. They hunted quite away 
from the shores. There were ordinary Eskimo who 



102 Labrador 

made sometimes six weeks' journeys to Ungava, bring- 
ing kometiks piled four feet high with furs, and they 
would return with tobacco by the hundredweight, and 
maybe rifles, five or six of them; but they bought no 
provisions of the post. 

As ever, there were tales of trouble from infringe- 
ment of hunting territory, as when somewhere about 
Ungava a ship's crew, beset, took to hunting deer 
themselves. The Eskimo, in resentment, scuttled the 
ship while the men were away hunting. No less the 
primeval tale of women stealing, and the Eskimo man 
has a heavy hand. It was forty or fifty years ago. 
The company's ship was wrecked, and the crew sepa- 
rated in two boats. The mate, Armstrong, brought his 
crew out at Ungava. The captain's sailors made 
trouble with the Eskimo women, whereupon the men 
turned in and killed the whole white party. Among 
others hunting there they told how in recent years 
an Ungava Eskimo killed a very large white bear 
with his knife alone. 

The Indians were busy between ship and shore for 
a day or two, putting through the heavy job of trans- 
porting freight. Along with lighter goods was much 
that was not easy to handle, such as flour and pork, 
besides the weighty hogsheads of molasses. In the 
intervals the workers spread about the place in a vaca- 
tion spirit, as if making the most of their excursion. 
One evening the younger ones got out Cotter's football. 
They were active, and there was a good deal of fun, 
through moccasin-foot kicking is not very effective. 
Once the goods were ashore Cotter and his people shut 
themselves into the store to open the cases and get ready 
for trading, leaving the Indians outside. We had a 



Indians 103 

good deal of talk. There were eighty people, they said, 
left at their place on the George. It took them seven 
days to come over. 

The furs come down in snug, spindle-shaped bundles 
laced up as with a shoe lacing, the cover being seal- 
skin, hair outside, to keep the water out. Such bundles 
usually have two carrying lines, one for the head and 
the other to cross the shoulders. Furs are their money ; 
and some of them, such as the martens, are not much 
heavier than banknotes ; indeed furs are about as current 
as money almost anywhere in northern Canada. 

As to the kokomesh, the namdycush trout, they said 
it was common in the lakes, up to two and a half feet 
long and very deep; the depth they emphasized, for 
depth means both quantity and quality, and the koko- 
mesh is their principal fish. They would not say that 
there were any very heavy ones, this to my surprise, 
for some of their lakes are large, and it is certain that 
in some of the lakes of the northwest at least, the 
namdycush grows to nearly a hundred pounds weight. 
The fontinalis was well known, and the whitefish, with 
various suckers. We agreed easily on the names of 
the usual animals of the North, and the common birds 
and trees. They did not understand my name for the 
north star. 

Two or three of them became interested in my prints 
taken on southern-slope rivers, telling others about 
them, who came in turn to see. Many of my things 
were new or unusual to them, beginning with the canoe. 
They were interested in everything, finally showing, like 
everybody else, curiosity as to what I was there for. 
The chief took me off alone one day, and began to 
quiz: ** Tante tshina kokominah?" he asked. The 



104 Labrador 

words were plain, but I could not believe I had heard 
clearly. "Xante tshina kokminah?" he insisted, with 
emphasis. There was no doubt, he was asking, 
"Where is your old woman?" Whatever business 
was it of his? At last it came to me that it was his 
way of asking where my home was, and I pointed south : 
" Twelve days in the fireboat — twelve days — night 
and day, night and day ; it is very far " ; this in Mon- 
tagnais, of course. "What are you here for?" I 
told him I was not a trader, not a hunter, and stayed in 
my own country most of the time; but once in a while 
I liked to travel, to go to a new country, to see the 
animals and birds and fish and trees and the people ; then 
I went back to my country again. He seemed to 
understand and we drifted into other talk. Before we 
parted he asked, " Why don't you go inland with us 
and have a tent and a wife at Tshinutivish? " I told 
him I should like to go over there tremendously (true 
enough) but it was getting late in the season, and I 
really must go back home. I might come up next year. 
Afterwards I speculated as to whether he expected me 
to bring along a kokominah, or whether he would have 
found one for me up there, but the matter would have 
strained my powers in the language. Still I ought to 
have asked him. 

The Oldtown canoe was a great attraction. They 
were beginning to use canvas themselves, and knew 
how limp it was, how hard to make a handsome job 
with. Indeed, how they can build as shapely a canvas 
canoe as they do without using a form is hard to see. 
The symmetry and perfect surface of mine was a des- 
pair to them. Long they would stand over it, studying 
and lifting it; their heads surely swam with being kept 



Indians 105 

upside down in studying out the neat work in the ends. 
I should have been glad to explain that they were really 
better builders than we, that it was no trouble to do 
such work if one used a form to model on, but I had 
not the language. I could have sold the canoe easily. 
They did not like the broad paddles, and in this were 
right. Katshiuas looked doubtfully at the light gun- 
wale; " Nauashu," he said, " It is frail," and I tried to 
explain that the stiffness we get by nailing the sheathing 
and ribs together made a heavy gunwale unnecessary. 
In their canoes the gunwale is the very backbone. 
Katshiuas put his hand upon the cane seat, of which 
unnautical device I was duly ashamed. " Do you sit 
dozvn here?" he asked, incredulously, at if pained. 
They kneel, themselves, low down, sitting upon their 
heels. I explained, sheepishly, as I had about the 
paddles, that I did not make these things and knew 
they were all wrong. Before the trading was over I 
saw one of the canoe builders buying brass clinching 
nails ; he was evidently going to try them. 

I had been giving a piece of tobacco for a camera 
snap now and then, until the boys used to call out 
" Tsh'tamau! " ^ (tobacco) almost any time I appeared 
in sight, and it came to be expected. One day before 
trading began the chief asked me if I wanted to make 
a picture, and grouped up a lot of his people on the 
platform, while I took three snaps. As I turned away, 
there was a bedlam of cries for Tsh'tamau; " Aishkats," 
'* By and by," I said, and pointed to the store ; they 
laughed and scattered. Later in the day I bought 
twenty-six of the little black plugs they prefer, one for 
each man, and with pockets and hands full went out, 

1 Tsh-tay,-m6w. 



106 Labrador 

nodding to two or three Indians who were in sight. 
They saw, disappeared, and presently came back with 
the rest, surrounding me in wild riot. • As fast as one 
got a plug he mixed in again with the others. There 
would not have been the least trouble in their coming 
two or three times apiece, for I could not keep track 
of them, and I felt sure they would do so. But when 
they stopped coming there was still one plug left over 
• — the man who had refused to give me a pose had 
stayed away. I was surprised at this fair play, but 
experience with more than a hundred individuals since 
that time has developed nothing but the same sort of 
thing. 

Now came the trading. Most of the furs had been 
passed in before the ship came, and paid for with 
colored counters like small poker chips. Yellow ones 
are $5, white $2, red 50 cents, blue 20 cents. This 
money is used like any other for buying the goods. 
The older men coach the younger ones in their trading. 
There is, or was on this occasion, no ill-temper, and 
much laughing as the goods were chosen. The list of 
items was long.^ Katshinas bought a folding stove. 
Red handkerchiefs with a pattern were mostly pre- 
ferred to the blue ones; they bought any number of 
them. Prices were stiff, a light single shotgun, muzzle 
loader, was $16. The chief finally asked for a " debt," 
that is, something on credit. 

" August 4. Two wolverene skins among the rest 
this morning, also one or two heavy-furred whitish 

1 They buy cartridges, powder, shot, tobacco, tea, cloth, shirts, 
leggins, needles, thread, ribbon, beads, axes, knives, spy-glasses, 
kettles, Eskimo boots, blankets (white), hooks, lines, mouth- 
harmonicas, handkerchiefs. 



Indians 107 

wolf skins, very large ; quite a few otter; a good number 
of white foxes, many reds, and some cross foxes. 
A black fox fetched $ioo. 

"It is a tough piece of work for C. to stand all day 
and deal with them, but he does it admirably. He 
works pretty fast and there is no great amount of 
shopping bother such as one might expect. John 
Dicker and Johnny E. run upstairs, climb shelves, 
weigh, and measure. It has gone on from six this 
morning and will hardly be over to-night. 

" In a general way a man buys, besides his various 
personal stuff, a large lot of something like powder, 
tea, or some one kind of cloth. As there is no sign 
of discussion among them I take it that this is done 
by prearrangement, and that a redisturbution is made 
afterwards." 

About midday the fifth trading was over. Then 
a curious change came over the Indians ; they had been 
easy, good natured, leisurely; now they were hurried, 
unresponsive, silent; they crouched over their bundles 
intently ; their backs seemed always toward one. Two 
boats were ready, William's and the Hudson's Bay 
Company's " punt." Without taking leave or looking 
back they scattered down the wharf and into the boats. 
The older men got into the punt, eight of them. 

They were unmodified wild men again, and dis- 
agreeable to boot. I was taken aback, not to say dis- 
concerted, but at any rate I had seen the Naskapi way 
of leaving a white man's place. Still I could have 
kicked them, one and all. There are mitigating cir- 
cumstances, though, when one comes to know why they 
choose this way. 

I decided to go along as far as Opetik anyway, 



108 Labrador 

though with no definite plan beyond. Johnny Edmunds 
had told me that his father would go inland with me, 
he knew. I might never be on the coast again, and 
anything observed while I was on the spot would be 
so much gain. There was a good chance that I would 
be able to get some pictures of them in deerskin clothes 
at Opetik, when they were less covered by the wretched 
cloth things which most were wearing outside, and I 
might even make some arrangement to go along w^ith 
them for a day or two. So I got in with the eighteen 
younger men, the older ones looking too sour, holding 
fast to the tow line of the canoe. We were packed 
like sardines. 

The punt, sailed by a bay man named John, started 
well ahead, and was, withal, a faster boat than ours. 
We were a fairly companionable mob when once off, 
and when it went calm off Shung-ho, two of the young 
fellows asked if they might take the canoe, as of 
course they might — a good thing, crowded as we 
were. The outriggers bothered them, and before long 
they came very civilly to see if they might take them 
off; once clear of these they paddled a good many 
miles. When we landed at Jim Lane's, I took the canoe 
and paddled it ashore myself. There was a little slop, 
and because I did not 'hold the canoe quite straight, 
though I thought I was doing very well as the wind 
was, the young scamps hooted and laughed. Derision 
is an easy gift of the young Indians, they are quick 
to see an opening and have all the wit they need. I 
had suffered a little in dignity from having dropped in 
with the younger men. 

We had rather a good time, naming everything we 
could see or think of, birds, animals, fish, and trees. 



Indians 109 

At last they found a tree I did not know their name 
for, and were triumphant, but I had done pretty well. 
They pointed southwest up the valley from Opetik and 
said, " Nashkau shebo," — one could go to Northwest 
(Nascaupee) River that way. Nashkau, Nishku in 
Montagnais, is the Canada goose. There is probably 
a confusion in calling the river Nascaupee, which is 
a common if an uncomplimentary name for a northern 
Indian. I had some raisins and chocolate which I 
passed about, and in turn one of them gave me a piece 
of indifferent- tasting caribou tallow, which they melt 
and run into cakes. It was slightly turned. 

Jonny E. talked, his eye on my rifle; he was un- 
necessarily afraid that George would get it, and told 
how, when I finally gave out the night I boated with 
him and George to the Inlet, and went to sleep on the 
fish, G. had helped himself largely to my stock of 
chocolate and bacon ; things which, by the way, I could 
not replace. I had noticed that these supplies went 
down remarkably about that time. As it was rather 
late for Johnny to explain his position as accessory I 
did not warm toward him. Later he warned me of 
lice, saying that he often had one or two after boating 
Indians. Although I was certainly well mixed in with 
them that day I came off clear. 

The Opetik venture came to little. It was late when 
we arrived, and too dark for pictures, save one of two 
boys who came and asked to be taken together; one 
was Nah-pay-o, of whom I was to see something in 
coming years. Nor was the matter of darkness the 
worst, for John had been the bearer of a hint to 
William from the post, and he refused point blank to 
go inland. 



110 Labrador 

The up-river tide would not serve until two in the 
morning, but the Indians carried their things some 
way across a neck to their embarking place, built fires, 
cooked and waited. I was left alone near the house 
for a time, the family having gone over with the 
Indians. A dozen large dogs were going about to- 
gether. They had been restive and excited about the 
Indians, having indeed laid hold of a boy. Fortunately 
the family were there and clubbed them off. Now I 
was walking about, thinking what to do and oblivious 
of all dogs. I had had no trouble that year with the 
many I had been among; but I smelt as Indian, doubt- 
less, after late associations, as the real thing, and ought 
to have realized the danger of it. 

All at once I was conscious of being surrounded by 
the whole group of dogs, tails up and moving along 
with me, their noses and closed teeth rubbing against 
my elbows with surpressed growls; only a snap from 
one and the whole pack would have me down and in 
pieces. It was a bad situation. For an instant rose 
the mist of panic. In a matter of seconds my eyes 
rolled* to a stick not far away which I could reach 
without stooping. It would not do to move suddenly, 
and I strolled as before. Once I clutched the stick, 
and swung it high, the dogs scattered. Sticks are 
swung to kill on that coast. 

I went over to the Indians, singled out Katshiuas, 
and told him I wanted to see a little of the country and 
would give him my canoe if he would help me to keep 
along with them one, two, or three days, and would give 
me in return some old canoe — " ipishash ush, tshiash 
ush " — " a small canoe, worn canoe," and I would come 



Indians 111 

back by myself, " nil peiku," ^ — " myself alone." He 
was interested, got out quite a good canvas canoe, and 
offered it to me. " Miam ! "— " Good ! " I said, but he 
would have to help bring my stuff over the neck, and I 
was old and not very strong, and would have to have help 
on the march ; some one would have to go in my canoe. 
He called some of the young men from their blankets 
— it was then midnight ^ — and they talked together; 
then the young fellows flatly refused to take me on. 
It was not strange, they were heavily loaded and I 
would have been only a bother on my own showing. 
They were three to a canoe, and as to trying to keep up 
with them unaided, besides portaging an outfit and a 
ninety-pound canoe, and over the hard route George and 
I had taken — as well pursue the birds. 

I sought William's floor the rest of the night, not 
without mosquitoes. At three or so came a loud knock- 
ing at the door, and in strode Ashimaganish, the chief, 
demanding from dazed William a piece of pork which 
he assumed had been looted from one of his men. He 
was very rough. It really seemed as if we would have 
to produce it quick or be tomahawked, but it could not 
be found. William's protestations of innocence were 
received with the very worst grace by A., but he went 
off leaving us alive. 

When I went to the beach in the morning there was 
the pork in my canoe ! In the unloading one of the 
house people had naturally taken it for mine and put 
it where it belonged. As I remember, I made some 
arrangement with W. to explain next time the Indians 
came down, but I could not be very sorry that A. had 
not found it where it was. 

1 Pay-eeku. 



112 Labrador 

Next day William and I talked a long time. He 
was hazy and unresponsive when I tried to discuss the 
Side brook country and the ground I had overlooked 
beyond. I could not make him out. In the end I lost 
patience and put on the screws : " You know well 
enough how the brook winds above the rapids, you 
'inust know that fine lake on the head, and the fall with 
the sharp turn to the north where the river slides down 
the high rock ! " Now at last his face lighted, " You 
have been there, after all, you have been there." The 
trouble had been that the Opetik people thought I 
merely followed George back, and did not go over to 
Side brook at all. 

Although it was useless to try to keep up with the 
Indians alone, they would be two days, with their heavy 
loads, in getting to the Assiwaban; and by going by 
sea I might cut in ahead of them, for they reach the 
Asswiaban -close to tide water. With everything my 
way it could be done in a day, a long one, and im- 
pelled by a dream of getting pictures of the Indians 
while they were traveling, I started. But four hours 
of savage pulling against a strong head gale left me 
short of the Big Rattle, and though things improved 
then, I went tired and left o£f at five o'clock, camping 
behind high Tuh-pungiuk Rock just inside the fine bay 
of that name. 

The wide, easy slopes and dignified escarpments west 
of the bay are grateful to the eye after the rugged rock 
heights of the outer waters. Eastward, and near, are 
the little Un'sekat islands where I met old Abel and his 
women in July. From Tuh-pungiuk, which is seven 
hundred feet high, appeared some people evidently 
Eskimo, tending a net in the sweeping sand crescent 



Indians 113 

which runs out to the three islands. Not caring to 
disturb the peace of the Un'sekat mind again by show- 
ing myself just at night, I kept out of sight. My 
climb up the hill had been mainly with an eye to an 
arctic hare for supper, but there were only signs, and 
I had to come down, in more than one sense of the 
word, to bacon. It was my last night on the moss that 
year, and my last camp alone. 

The morning of the 7th there were tails of sea fog 
to the hilltops and a moderate northeaster began to 
drive in, cold and gloomy, with misty rain. I started 
on, but it took an hour's hard work and tossing to reach 
the first little island, hardly a mile away. It was clear 
that I could not get around and up the Assiwaban that 
day, that my Indianizing for the year was done. 
William had said that the " overfall " just below where 
the Indians would take the river was ten miles above 
Side brook. It was really only a mile or so, but even 
at that the distance was at least thirty miles from my 
camp at Tuh-pungiuk, and the day was one to be under 
cover. 

At low tide the three little Un'sekat islands are united, 
and I was able to walk the mile to the Noahs'. They 
were not afraid now, they had heard about me from the 
post, and asked me this time to dinner, with a welcome in 
o.ur fashion. Aboriginal hands are small and shapely, 
one finds in taking them. The little house was, I judged, 
eleven by thirteen, pretty snug for the eight of us. But 
it was clean; Antone's wife, who it appeared was a 
sister of William and David Edmunds, had lived at the 
post some time long ago and had not forgotten its ways. 
There was soap and a washtub and board, these out- 
doors, as was the cooking fire; the smell of the cooking 



114 Labrador 

was kept out of the little house. The fire inside was 
only for warmth, save in downright rain, Mrs. Antone 
had taken hold in the family and kept them up. And 
they were all kind, even as being Eskimo. Dripping as 
I was, in oilcoat shining from the drive of the icy sea, 
outdone by the elements, the warmth and welcome went 
far with me. For me were the best seat by the fire, the 
valeting by kindly hands, the dry, hot woolens brought 
out, the best of the trout from the pan. The sound 
of the axe, the going on of the kettle, the intent knife- 
point pricking out for the best trout — these are memo- 
ries that return. 

Toward night I gathered myself to go back to my 
outfit, meaning to sleep under the canoe. The house 
was "small, nor did I know whether it would do to take 
up with the family in such limited quarters, if indeed 
they cared to have me. They protested ; it did not look 
right, Mrs. Antone said, for a person to go off alone 
that way in a cold storm, to sleep without fire — why 
not stay with them and be comfortable. It came to the 
point of injury to their feelings. I hesitated, and 
yielded; there was only to go over to the canoe for a 
blanket. Now appeared some sort of doubt, perhaps 
in part curiosity. They were still in uncertainties of 
some sort. Then, as ever during the days I was there, 
I was not permitted to go out of sight alone; this time 
it was the stout six-year boy who went along; towed 
most helpfully over the hard places by a cord tied to 
the neck of a stout young dog. I was glad to have 
them along. There were some flocks of wonderfully 
tame ducks in sheltered nooks by the way, ruddies I 
thought, and some eiders and gulls, the latter nearly 
silent now that the nesting-time was over. 








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SQUARETAIL AND LAKE TROUT, ASSIWABAN RIVER, 1906 



Indians 115 

Once back at the house, with a few supphes, I be- 
came fairly one of the family. During the evening 
old Mrs. Noah turned and dried my skin boots, working 
them into pliability with the little gouge-like tool they 
all have, and stretching and pulling them into shape. 
She chewed well the hard places with short experienced 
teeth, sparing no pains, until the boots were as they 
had never been before. In the morning they were 
alongside my bed as fit as Sunday gloves. L was 
mended and tended. Never too many are these 
■women's hands by the way, and one never forgets. 

After I had been undressed and put to bed, they 
fetched a. long piece of cloth, like bunting, and curtained 
it around me, sleeping-car fashion. There was some 
rustling afterward, but I never knew how they stowed 
themselves, and when I turned out in the morn-ing they 
were about the house as usual. I had a rare sleep. It 
was too cold for mosquitoes. 

It is the usual thing hereabouts to have the summer 
house on some such rock as Un'sekat, where all breezes 
help against mosquitoes. The half -white people of the 
bays are more apt to chng to their winter houses, en- 
during and complaining, their poor dogs making warm 
nights hideous in their sleepless torture. A dog begins 
to wail his misery, another takes it up, and presently 
all are in full cry together. It is well to camp away 
from dogs, which draw flies, if possible on some little 
rock island. Then, if one have netting and be a good 
sleeper, something can be done. 

The Noahs' interest in me, partly as a new specimen 
in natural history, and more as to what I was going 
about in this way for, never quite subsided. Their 
original uneasiness came a good deal from experiences 



116 Labrador 

of the coast in the past with two or three other strangers 
who had passed along. One, if I remember, was in- 
sane; another, with a past, had committed suicide on 
being identified at some far north station. As to this 
sort of thing they became tolerably reassured, but of 
course no one would come away from the world and 
go about this way who hadn't something on his mind. 
Mrs. A., on a hazard, was explicitly sympathetic as to 
my past. There may have been a special reason for 
wishing to know the worst; I might be looking for a 
place to settle ; such things had happened, and the young 
lady of the family was eligible. But they ought to 
know something about me. One cannot be too careful 
in these things. It had not helped matters that I passed 
up intentionally through the Big Rattle, thjiough it was 
as smooth as oil at the time. " You-are-a-doire-defl ! " 
said Mrs. A., in the queer speech she had before her 
English became limbered up. Still, not to abandon her 
sex, she did not wholly disapprove my supposed reck- 
lessness, and remained always sympathetic. 
, The second day the women went to the net behind 
the island and I was left alone in the house. After a 
time I looked out, and to my surprise saw four men, 
Eskimo, with old Abel superintending, laying out a net 
on the beach-grass a few yards away. How they got 
there so quietly I could not imagine. Could a boat- 
load of people land without my knowing it, without 
hearing all the sharp-cut Eskimo talk of such occasions ? 
It seemed strange, if not uncanny. I looked harder, 
and saw that it was simply the women of the family, 
who had dropped off their skirts and were doing their 
work in the usual men's trousers they wore underneath. 
Their new cut was much more appropriate and fit. 



Indians 117 

The young lady of the house, slim and straight, with 
high-bred shoulders, looked particularly well in her 
handsome sealskins. Certainly skirts a-re the last thing 
for an active fisherwoman. 

Complete enough seemed the life for the time. There 
was no comfort to be added that was of consequence; 
the warm hearth, the good fare of the sea, the kindly 
thought of the people, were enough for the day. 

Time comes when almost any refuge, and this was 
more than a refuge, goes far with one ; and the chancing 
upon people of a new race in their home happens not 
too often. The alternative with me was weathering 
out a long wet northeaster, at near freezing, off alone. 

We lived well. A nine-pound salmon came in, and 
there were al-ways fine large trout. Some one would 
run down the rocks, bring back a kettle of clear sea 
water, and in this the trout would be boiled ; there was 
no salt but that of the sea water. At first fish done 
this way tasted flat to me, with a trace of bitter, but 
after a little I preferred them that way. We were 
certainly doing well. " Eat ! Eat plentee ! There is 
plentee ! " old Abel would say, as I paused over the fish. 
One day he took a hammer and asked me to go along 
with him, across the little island. He led the way to a 
boulder of lightish trap, much like others about in 
appearance, but unlike them it rang when he struck it. 
He thought there must be something unusual in it, 
perhaps gold, to be so different from the dull-sounding 
stones about. I had the ungrateful task of explaining 
that there was no gold in it, that it was no more valuable 
than the other stones. One would not expect him to 
notice that the boulder rang. Eskimo have remarkable 
powers of observation in physical matters, not to say 



118 Labrador 

of analysis. The well-known block-and-tackle purchase 
with which they haul out walrus and other heavy water 
game shows this ; even though they may have taken the 
idea from whalers, their clever adaptation of it, at least, 
places them well up in mechanical conception. They 
have unusual skull capacity. I think it is Deniker, 
among the ethnologists, who states that a certain string 
of fifteen Eskimo skulls had greater average capacity 
than any similar string of any other race. 

For a day or two the little air of uncertainty about 
me did not change ; the family were still at a loss to place 
me. Then, apparently, they came into a new light, and 
the way of it was hardly to be expected. It was a 
matter, we will say, of botany. The flowers of the 
bleak, exposed place were almost as interesting as at 
Fanny's earlier, though they were now of the less engag- 
ing types of early fall. I happened to gather a few and 
took them into the house to be named. Mrs. Antone 
fell to and we had a session over them. Some of the 
family scattered out and brought others ; at last, as a 
sure climax, a dandelion! I really ought to have 
withheld my having seen one before. With this flower 
episode their minds considerably cleared. They could 
understand this ; a person who was interested in flowers 
could not be very bad. 

About the islands the cotton-flower grows to a fine 
size, with its great white boll. It is " Mitten flower " 
here, Waw-lu-yuk. I asked if their people used to 
wear mittens of whitebear cubs' fur, — " Yes, how did 
you know ? " The alder is " green-flower," ohiwi-uk. 
They do not eat the dandelion ; its name is wis-uk-tuk, 
meaning, as I remember, " yellow-flower." The mush- 
room or toadstool is " devilflower." 



Indians 119 

Antone had a fast, deep sailboat, and was generally- 
prosperous that year. He had sold a silver fox for 
$ioo, twelve white foxes and six reds, and besides had 
shot more than a hundred deer, mostly near by. " He 
was cracking at them every day," said old Abel. They 
needed that many deer, between family and dogs. 
When deer did not come to the shore A. had to go 
out to the open water for seals, and evidently did not 
much fancy this ice-edge alternative. The ice shifts 
out and in, and there is always a chance of being carried 
out to sea. The only birds at the ice edge are sea 
pigeons, said to be white in winter, Antone looked me 
over when I spoke of liking to have a winter on the 
coast, and said. " You couldn't stand it." 

From my diary : " Caplin's eggs line the long 
beaches, sometimes three inches deep. Sand color or 
paler. The people dry caplin on the rocks whole for 
winter dog food. The ghost of a smelt in appearance, 
it is the rabbit of the water, on which everything else 
feeds. 

" There are eleven dogs altogether, five or six being 
puppies. So far from being without feeling for their 
masters, they are sociable and good companions. Like 
most dogs kept in numbers they are not quite so re- 
sponsive as ours, but knock about the place in a stout, 
self-reliant way, hairing up readily at each other, but 
behaving pretty well at that. They are easily started 
off into a pandemonium of howling. I have not heard 
them bark yet, though they do, I am told, under some 
circumstances. Immemorial use at the sleds has given 
them a peculiar bracing set behind, as if all ready to 
pull. All here are fat, living principally on coarse fish 
caught in the trout nets, sculpin, rock cod, and flounders, 



120 Labrador 

besides the waste from the trout, and by beach-combing 
about the shores on their own account." Curiously, 
they Hke the sculpins best of all, and not only they, but 
some people think very well of them. 

The dogs look singularly well, happy, and at home 
when living with Eskimo in this way, as in their glory ; 
those I have seen in the bays have not looked as well 
off, and those of the mission villages and posts almost 
always seem inferior. 

Antone agreed to sail me to Fanny's when the 
weather improved, as it did in three or four days. 
The distance, some sixty miles, was too much for me 
to take on by canoe without large allowance for de- 
lays. I have never undertaken long distances on the 
coast by canoe very willingly, either by day or night, 
the conditions are too uncertain. One year two young 
men of the shore, rather venturesome ones at that, 
were three weeks with a good sailboat going from 
Hopedaie to Nain and back, although in winter the dis- 
tance one way has been made in a single day with dogs. 

The day came at last. I was not glad to leave. 
People of wilderness places always stand at the shore 
as you go ; and the women wave as you make the offing. 

It was only the Little Rattle this time. The current 
was strong and the place narrow. There was wind, 
but fast as the boat was she could not beat through. 
When we came about, the current took us back too far. 
Again and again Antone tried, then lay in the eddy 
until the tide slacked and we could pass the bar. Now 
Antone showed his quality and his craft hers. He 
would let me touch nothing, tiller nor sheet nor spar; 
I might have been a child. When I became cold he 
invited me to get into his fine seal sleeping bag, with 



Indians 121 

its white blanket lining. I looked ruefully at my skin 
boots, wet and not too clean. " It can be washed," he 
said shortly, and I slid in. The sheets, beautifully cut 
lines of some large seal, greased, small but unbreakable, 
all ran to cleats within Antone's reach as he sat at the 
tiller. With flying hands, the tiller let go, he would 
cast off and cleat the lines when we came about, as a 
master plays his keys; like a demon he would bound 
forward to hold some fluttering sail for an instant to 
the swing of the wind, and we never missed the turn. 
The waters he knew. At full speed, the boat lying 
over, he would dash for the rock shore until I quivered, 
then short about and off for some far point, where, as 
we swung by, terrorized eiders tore from under the 
lee and sea pigeons shot from below water into the 
air as if fired from guns. Recovered, the pigeons 
would swing afar and come close over again, peering 
down at us curiously, all black below, and their bright 
red feet steering behind. 

Later the wind eased. We passed Jim Lane's, two 
miles away, across the wide passage; he spoke regret- 
fully of it when I saw him next, two years later, but 
we had feared losing the wind, and it was a long way 
to Fanny's. Jim is the best of the best ! It calmed off 
finally. Somewhere about Shung-ho we met the 
Eskimo John and his wife, who were " going up to help 
Antone " ; to help Antone do what is not important ; I 
think it was to get out some " wood," timber we should 
call it, for a house. It would have been as well, as 
things went next day, if we had not met them. Not 
to invest useful John, good shot and good hunter, still 
less his ample wife, with the dignity of an evil genius, 
it would have been as well, just as it would have been 



122 Labrador 

if he had not reached Opetik sooner than I did the 
week before and kept WilHam from going inland with 
me. We all landed on a large boulder with deep water 
around to boil a kettle and have tea. In landing J. 
sailed his boat square into my canoe — it was tailing 
behind our boat — and made no apology. I was cold 
and cross, and snapped at him for doing it. He was 
impudent, I responded, and he in turn, and in the end 
threatened me. I couldn't " come into their country 
and growl this way." There was something about 
breaking me in two. We were all on the boulder to- 
gether. Antone was evidently a well-knit friend of 
Mrs. J., and began to look black as things came to a 
climax. No one likes to be held to the mark in the 
presence of his women folk, and Antone's position was 
not much easier than J.'s. It wouldn't do to recede, 
so I pulled off my gloves, slapped them down on the 
rock one by one, stood clear and waited. They were 
not boxers, the first one would go overboard. But 
Eskimo do not know when to stop, and, woman and 
all, the situation might become mixed. But nothing 
ever quite happens, not under the Union Jack, nor did 
then. 

We ate silently and parted. Some way along Antone 
tied up, and we slept uncomfortably in the boat, with 
flies. We were at Daniel's in the morning, where a 
kutshituk was again hopping about over the dogs. The 
wind rose strongly from south of east, and we made the 
post early. Antone had talked of getting some one to 
go to the cape with us, as he did not know the waters 
well. He needed some one, fairly, but there was no 
one to go, and in the end he gave out. The foot of 
the run was white, and he did not like to go into strange 




JIM LANE 




A BEAR, BEAR POND, 1905 



Indians 123 

waters in such weather; moreover Mr. and Mrs. John 
were at Un'sekat waiting for him. The fine diplo- 
matic hand of John, after our tiff, may have been con- 
cerned in the matter. 

I explained how ill it left me for the mailboat, and 
that I should have gone to Nain if he had not said 
he would take me to Spracklin's, but he did not waver. 
Before long he walked off for his boat, the wind being 
fair, without asking for his pay. " Where are you 
going?" I put in, "Home." "Come back, I haven't 
paid you." He came, surprised, and I handed him 
five dollars, the first he had ever had no doubt. He 
did not fall into the sea in his astonishment, but looked 
near it. For some time he hung about, trying to do 
things for me, and finally left with a good deal of light 
in his face, which has never failed in the years since 
whenever we have met. I doubt if the Un'sekat people 
had any thought of my paying them, certainly not for 
taking care of me. As to boating me away from their 
place, it obviously had to be done, unless I was going 
to stay, and that was all there was about it. That I 
had worldly possessions to speak of, there or anywhere, 
did not enter their minds, I think. 

So it is in their world ; the wanderer must have what 
he requires, shelter and food and help on his way if 
he needs it — these at least and of course. 

I asked the post people to put me across the big bay 
with their large boat, pointing out that it was no 
weather for canoeing, and offering to pay almost any- 
thing. But they refused ; they were too busy. Cotter, 
however, was going down himself on the second day 
after and would take me along; he would get there 
first anyway. (This I did not forget later.) But I 



124 Labrador 

was not willing to take chances on the steamer this 
time, and though I stayed over night at the post, which 
could not well be helped, I waited no longer. 

Here my diary becomes rather unjust and certainly 
spiteful toward some pretty good people along the 
shore. I was a good deal excercised. The entry con- 
cludes, helplessly, " Well, here I am, wind bound, the 
look of rain in the clouds and a steamer to catch! " 

When I got off in the morning it looked impossible 
to go beyond the foot of the run. The tide was going 
out strong, a swell coming in from the open, and a 
sharp white sea from the cape east. It made a jump- 
ing lop, striking at everything. All I had in mind was 
to drop down that far, camp, and be on the spot when- 
ever it would do to go on ; at least I was now fresh to 
row. Sometimes, however, things are better than they 
look. Inching gradually into the bad-looking mess 
at the foot of the run I found that the canoe was not 
taking the least water, and held on for some time. 
But the irregular motion, the pitching and sudden jumps 
of the light canoe in the tide rips were so wearing 
that I gave up. There was no danger, and not much 
to do but balance and be thrown about, but the motion 
was too exhausting. Along the mainland was a line 
of " barricados," as often happens, boulders shoved 
up by the ice. They call them belly-carders here, in 
good faith. Behind them was a sand flat just awash, 
so that after passing between the boulders it was possible 
to walk along dry shod in skin boots and drag the 
canoe. It was easy going after the bobble of the run. 
Flowers' bay, next, was out of the current, though 
lively, and by one o'clock I was across and boiling a 
kettle on the southern point. The swell was mostly 



Indians 125 

cut off here, by Massacre Island outside. Six hours 
more and I was across Lane's Bay. 

From the north side of the bay I had seen what 
looked to be some trap boats with masts a mile above 
the south point, but after two hour's rowing they 
turned out to be large schooners. I tried to talk with 
a skipper, and would not have minded a passing chat 
by the stove and a cup of tea, but he had all the 
shadowed reticence, and in that case, disagreeableness, 
of the skipper " on fish," afraid the word will be 
passed along and bring in other schooners ; and I pulled 
away hoping never to see him or his again. Heavens ! 
His countenance, save perhaps for the beard, few would 
care to have ! 

An ill-natured extra mile against the tide and at 
right angles to my proper course, to Black Point, and 
the last stretch to the cape harbor opened up. It was 
slow work, all day. The canoe, wonderful as she was 
at keeping on top, at taking care of one whatever came, 
was apt to pound when against a short sea, and spattered 
up spray which rained down inboard. She had to be 
eased over the top of every wave. In the hour after 
lunch I may have made a half mile; the wind was 
strongest then, and the sea, though coming off the cape 
island and not high, was well whitened. It was not 
the pulling, but the incessant pitch and throw of the 
corky craft that told with the hours. Sitting in the 
middle leaves the boat wonderfully free to rise, balance, 
and elude what comes, but one's waist, which has to be 
the universal joint of all gyrations, gets hard wear. In 
flat water one could row forever. 

I have never seen a white man's canoe that would 
drive fast into a steep sea and keep dry. The lines of 



126 Labrador 

the sea creatures are not in them. The Indians' sea 
canoes are another matter. They can be driven. 

Once under the White Point, where the fog shut in 
on my night trip down, the water became level. At 
ten I was on the sand beach at the end of the cape 
harbor, after thirteen hours of actual rowing. It was 
unusually dark. My back was numb, and as I stepped 
about looking for white and visible bits of firewood, 
without much directing power, it was as if on stilts, 
and it was no joke getting down to pick up a piece of 
wood when I found it. After awhile I got together 
enough to do with and what followed was worth while. 
It was a time to let out, and I cooked and cooked and 
smoked to the limit, content. It was good travel, 
it was good to make port. At such times one asks no 
odds of the world. 

After midnight I took a pack over the portage, mean- 
ing to continue around the harbor a mile and a half 
more, but the sloping rocks with water below would 
not do, dark as it was. I could not see my feet or 
footing much, and was unsteady in getting about, for 
the stilts continued. I was not too sure even of get- 
ting the canoe over the portage. By the time I was 
back for her, however, circulation was on again, and 
the stilts became legs. The tide was out, and gave 
me a nasty slow time getting out over the mud and again 
to the land on the other side. One wants an easy bit 
after eighteen hours on the road, and slipping around 
as if on banana skins at two in the morning with a 
canoe on is not sport. It seemed as if half the width 
of the harbor was only awash. After all, the canoe 
picked up lightly enough for the last lift above tide 
mark. 



Indians 127 

Spracklin did not wake when I lighted a match over 
him and spoke, and knowing his desperate pace and 
short hours of sleep I turned away from his raised 
arms, bandaged for his many " pups," and pulling off 
my wet boots fell upon the narrow, one-sided old lounge 
and banked myself up against the back. Almost like 
the shutting of a steel trap I went dead to the world. 
The house had felt warm, coming from outside, but 
I ought to have covered myself. Damp from salt 
water and perspiration, in an hour I woke up chattering, 
pulled out my sleeping bag and got in, and there Sprack- 
lin found my mortal semblance in the morning. 
• The rest was not much more than getting home. 
For a day I sat about, ate a deal of fish, and slept. 
The second morning I was putting the canoe in to go 
jigging cod, when the stones rattled, and along the 
beach came Cotter, with young Jerry Oliver, bearing 
a box. They had been becalmed, nighted chilly on a 
barren rock without blanket or fire, and looked as if 
they had had enough of it. Then came my revenge; 
easily Cotter had said that he would get there first. 
We had some good talks the next days, and many in 
years following. 

It was Tuesday, the nth, that I rowed down from 
the inlet; it was to be Monday, the 17th, before the 
mailboat came. Fish were still scarce; I have a note 
of six hundred quintals for each side. The nets had 
been out of water in some of the best fishing. Tom 
Poole, the foreman, and another of the crew rowed to 
an island far outside and jigged a boatload of large 
fish, jigging right and left, four lines to two men. 
They slat them off the hook over a crosspiece in front 
of the fisher; there is no time for fussing. 



128 Labrador 

From my diary : " August 15. A clear, warm day, 
all rocks and air and sunshine, a sea blue and sparkling, 
and a fine line of bergs passing south. Tall ice is 
never wanting on the eastern sky line ; it gives the key- 
note to this barren rock region, its real latitude. 

" Some snow is left, always in the most sunny 
hollows under the ridges, where the northwest winds 
pile the deepest drifts. There is no level snow in 
winter, all is gathered behind something. The stream 
across from the stage is dried up, as I found on going 
over to fish. New flowers have come, not many. Red- 
berries are eatable now, though in blossom a month 
ago; the forcing effect of the long sunshine is remark- 
able. Young birds are about, sandpipers and the like, 
and land sparrows. Snow buntings will be here soon, 
everywhere. The gulls are nearly silent, the ravens 
still more so, but hold on in the ledges across the harbor. 
In the clear water off the landing stage rock-cod and 
sculpins work about the fishheads thrown over. 
Spracklin says there are clams here, which the ' Eski- 
maws ' eat. 

" I jigged cod at times, by an island near, in two 
or three fathoms' depth. A dozen fish would hang 
just over the jig in the close circle, heads in, making 
passes for it, and generally getting the hook under the 
broad jaw. The jig is sawed up and down fifteen or 
eighteen inches just over the kelp. In three or four 
easy jerks I would have a fish, and was sometimes 
well loaded down in a couple of hours. In the boat 
they yield a little like water with the motion of row- 
ing, especially in a swell, and are a peculiarly dead load 
for a canoe. In a steep sea they might easily slide 



Indians 129 

to one end and make trouble; compartments are the 
thing, to keep them distributed. 

" The jig is a cruel thing; many fish get away badly 
torn. The waste is great. Moreover, if we must kill, 
let us kill mercifully, at least as mercifully as do most 
savages. The jigger, the steel trap, and the shotgun 
as commonly used, are maimers and torturers. 

" When a fish is hurt he hurries away for the ' doc- 
tor,' a beetlish bug which fastens to the wound until it 
heals. This doctor and his mission are told of seriously 
on all the fishing coast. There is no questioning the 
doctor's existence and activity, though the motives for 
his attentions may be suspected. 

" We have been eating cods' livers, tasting like con- 
centrated pate de fois gras. They are rather too rich ; 
if one eats many at a time the world is all cod liver 
that day. Subdued by parboiling they come in well. 
Technically they are " blubber," as all grease-bearing 
things are. The universal blubber cask of the coast 
is strongly in evidence to all senses, including, when 
fermentation is going on, that of hearing. 

" Sunday, i6th. No mailboat yet, though all felt 
that she would come. . . . Bruise for breakfast' — ■ 
good S. and Tom Poole treating their ' pups,' which 
come of the slime and wrist-work. They are bad to 
see. 

" It is half a jail matter, this waiting without being 
safe in going out of sight at all. In clear weather it 
is not so bad — one can go up on the hill and look for 
the steamer. In foggy weather it is wretched. No 
reading matter left. 

" Spracklin looks rested since the fishing slacked. 



ISO Labrador 

He tells of the exact ways of the Hudson's Bay Com- 
pany people. Their carefulness goes into post details ; 
a former agent at the Inlet cut some timber himself, 
sawed the boards, and enlarged the dining-room. 
When the chief came along he had him pull it all down 
because it had not been reported. 

" Skipper Jim is not so afraid that I will fall to 
pieces now, remarking when Cotter was here and we 
were sitting about with one or two visiting skippers. 
* Do you know what I said to myself about you the 
morning you came up on the stage? I said to myself, 
" Has that man come up here to die? " Then C. put 
in, in a tone of cheerful support, ' Well, I didn't see him 
then, but I saw him when he got to my landing ! ' 

" It is a good vitalizing climate. The Newfound- 
landers say, when worse for the winter, ' Oh, well, 
I'll be all right when I get to the Labrador.' There 
is less fog than in Newfoundland, less housing with 
others who are sick, the light summer buildings are 
more sanitary. And fish-smells, however fierce, seem 
harmless." 

They can be trying nevertheless. The night before 
the mailboat came it was nearly calm, with an air from 
the great refuse pile under the stage straight to my 
window. It kept me awake. But for fear of another 
night of it I should have waited for the boat to come 
back from Nain, where it turned out she was going. 
However, the chance to see the place was worth taking. 
As we passed north outside the islands, familiar land- 
marks appeared far away along the mainland. Tuh- 
pungiuk was the plainest of them, a dozen miles away. 
There still, doubtless, were the Noahs, tending their 
nets. 




A FINBACK, HAWK HARBOR 




THE BEGINNING OF THE PACK, CAPE HARRIGAN, 1905 



Indians 131 

Further south there was much talk of Hubbard, and 
some anxiety. He had gone light, and his prospects 
of success were doubtful, especially as it was thought 
he had no gill net, but I did not expect the tragedy that 
occurred. 

Towards the straits Norman Duncan came on with 
Briggs, his publisher's manager. Other Americans 
came on along, Hewitt, of Boston, climbing up the side 
with peculiar good will after having had two or three 
weeks' waiting on short provisions. At Twillingate, 
one of the best of the fishing towns, Duncan and Briggs 
and I spent a day or two of beautiful sunny weather, 
the very first of the summer there. Fog had prevailed 
every day until then. Fancy the women ghosting about 
all summer in the fog, the men gone " down to the 
Labrador!" Duncan stayed off at Exploits with his 
friends, the Manuels. Briggs and I took the Clyde to 
Lewisport, and went on by rail, parting at Boston. 
My summer reconnoissance, planned by the printed 
timetables for three weeks if I did not stop off at 
Fanny's, five if I did, had lasted just seventy days. 



CHAPTER VI 
1904 

In 1904 Robert Walcott and I left Boston by rail, 
July 18, without much intention beyond that of trying 
the Assiwaban River, perhaps staying inland over two 
steamer trips, nominally a month. The planning was 
merely a telephone matter — we were talking, found 
that both felt like going somewhere, and were off in 
a day or two without many words. I happened to 
know about sailing dates, also that there was a canoe 
to be had in St. John's. We bought the canoe by 
telegraph, and it was waiting us on board the Virginia 
Lake when we boarded her at Battle Harbor. It looked 
large, on the deckhouse, and when we walked over 
and lifted it our misgivings became fixed. She weighed 
one hundred and forty-one pounds, dry and light; 
although a canoe in shape and canvas skin, she only 
wanted rowing gear to be a good stout rowboat. She 
was a good piece of work, her maker being that rare 
mechanic Gerrish of Maine, from whose camp on B 
pond, years before, I had climbed an eastern hill and 
seen for the first time the grand southwestern rampart 
of Katahdin. 

Our doing much portaging with such a craft was 
out of the question. Still I remembered the blue 
Assiwaban stretching thirty miles inland without heavy 
rapids; we could go that far, surely. Our trip from 

132 



190 J^ 133 

Boston to ISTain was a record one, nine days to an 
hour, allowing for change of longitude. We might 
have saved something like a day on that, if the captain 
of the Home, from Bay of Islands through the Gulf 
to Battle Harbor, had not held back unnecessarily, for 
the Virginia Lake had waited for us nearly or quite 
twenty- four hours as it was — for us two only, and on 
a perfect day such as really counts for two days on that 
foggy, uncertain coast. The feelings of Captain Par- 
sons, as the hours went by, may be imagined, not to 
mention those of the discouraged passengers. Know- 
ing the way of things there I felt as if we had murdered 
a steamer voyage, and hastily went below until we were 
off and in another air. 

Peter McKenzie, the Hudson's Bay Company mana- 
ger, was on, and of all others to meet there, Stuart 
Cotter. He had made a new contract with the com- 
pany, and was taking charge at Northwest River, but 
although all the Davis Inlet coast had believed that he 
would make the very most of his trip across the water 
he was still a bachelor. 

We were some time at Rigolet, and there the Hud- 
son's Bay Company people got off. Captain Gray and 
the Pelican were waiting for them, and at a kind hint 
from Peter we were asked to go north by their ship. 
Chances looked better with the mailboat, and we did 
not change. It turned out better so, decidedly, for the 
Pelican took bottom in getting out of Cartwright, and 
it was many a day before she saw Davis Inlet again. 

McKenzie had nine wooden canoes, Peterboros, six- 
teen feet by thirty-eight inches by sixteen inches, strong 
and serviceable boats. He asked me what I thought 
of them, but did not say what I came to know after- 



134 Labrador 

ward, that some or all of them were presents for his 
old Naskapi friends at Chimo. In all the North he 
was then known to the Indians as " Our Father Mc- 
Kenzie," and he deserved the title. During his twelve 
or fourteen years at Chimo he had saved them from 
starvation more than once by organizing their deer 
hunts. It is probable that no one else has ever had 
their confidence and affection as he did. He was part 
Indian himself, and the blood told, with whatever 
allowance for his remarkable personality. 

The Spracklins were not doing much as to fish. We 
had but a short visit, merely while the mail was being 
made up. Ellen was still the mainstay. The old 
place and people looked home to me, indeed. The little 
sunny sitting-room with the stove and the corner cup- 
board, the chairs and old lounge on which in conjunc- 
tion we used to cobble up the lance net for my bed, were 
there unchanged. The room was always good to be 
in. Things had to be fairly near each other from 
necessity, but Spracklin was one of the few men who 
have a touch in living-rooms. One would as soon 
think of rearranging the fins on one of his cod as any- 
thing he had set about. I was there many a day before 
I saw how right the little place was. Men of the sea 
more than others, perhaps, can be shipshape without 
falling into the geometrically unpleasant. 

The place about, too, was always shipshape, in order. 
Spracklin was always painting things, boats and gear 
and buildings, down to the full round bull's-eyes accu- 
rately done in white on every door about the station. 
These helped one tell the door in the night, maybe, but 
Spracklin did it to label his entrances, his flat doors; 
it pleased his eye. 



1904 135 

We were at Nain at ten in the morning, and away 
southward by one. The feature of the voyage to 
Voisey's, some twenty-five miles, was the Eskimo boy, 
a waif about the mission, who went along to try to 
find the way. He had been over it only once, some 
time before. The navigation itself was on calm water 
and uninteresting; our craft was slow on water and a 
crusher on land. The boy paddled softly, he had never 
done it before and his arms ached. He took our nag- 
ging as imperturbably as an old farm horse. We had 
to have what help he could give, for the passages were 
wide, the shores high, and old saws about getting over 
your large waters while it is calm were all to the point. 
How the wind can blow in those long passages that 
stretch off below Nain! They are noble passages to 
see, 

I had said much to W. about grampuses, especially 
about the grampus of Un'sekat, and when a very large 
one crossed our wake rather near, and snorted prodi- 
giously, he certainly looked around. I think I had 
given him the impression that almost all grampuses 
came up under one's canoe. 

Where we lunched, some six miles down, below 
" the rattle," the boy wandered unnoticed and found 
some ptarmigan, but our flying shot went wide. The 
sharpness of these young Eskimo in finding and seeing 
game of all sorts is remarkable. I have often thought 
they were quicker sighted than even the Indians. 
They are more highly energized, and they seem as 
absolutely fitted to the coast life as the seals themselves. 
The Indian is a little too far north here, being at his 
northern limit and probably beyond his natural latitudes. 
The extraordinary diversity of Indian and Eskimo 



136 Labrador 

both in genius and physical habit indicates a good deal 
of separation during their elder race history. 

The young eiders and sea pigeons were flying well 
by this date, and we shot quite a few as they flew by. 
It seemed as if no ducks were ever better than these 
eiders when they came out of the kettle next morning. 

The boy did visible thinking toward night, as we 
approached the Voisey's Bay waters. A deepish bay 
to the right bothered him in the twilight, and we spent 
a little time looking it over, finally camping just in- 
side it on good moss. We were on Kikertavak, " Big 
Island," and some twenty miles from Nain. On the 
sea chart is shown a through passage west of this 
island, but according to the bay people it has no exis- 
tence. Six miles south of Nain the inside passage, the 
one we were in, takes a turn west for a mile or more, 
then turns sharply to the southeast around a notice- 
able crested mountain, visible from far about. 

The morning of the 28th, as we were at the eiders, 
the boy came in from one of his little disappearances, 
whispering excitedly, " Deers ! " Following him some 
way we came to a caribou, which Walcott shot handily. 
It was our first large meat, and a good omen for the 
future. In no time to speak of the boy skinned the 
animal and cut it up. 

We were at John Voisey's at midday. His wife, 
one of the Lanes, had formerly worked at Spracklin's. 
John told of seeing me go by last year, and of painting 
his gable red. He wanted no more such slips. He 
had been up Assiwaban in winter, but turned out to 
be a good deal wrong as regards Indian camping places 
and their movements — the old story with the shore 
people. He went along with us in a flat to the fall, 



1904 137 

over six miles on the bay and four or five by river, to 
help portage. The rocks along the river were slaty and 
on edge, cutting our moccasined feet; we had a time 
getting the heavy canoe along to a place where we could 
turn up the bank. It was a heavy matter to do with 
the boat on any terms in bad ground, and not much 
easier for three of us at once than for one alone to 
carry it. John was nearly all in by the time we had 
made the portage, some three quarters of a mile, though 
it was on level ground once we were up the hundred- 
foot bank. It was very hot on the sunny river bank 
at the far end, perhaps ninety degrees. The shore 
people simply wilt at such times, strong as many of 
them are; they are not hot-weather people. John was 
easily glad to start back for his cool sea place, where 
he could get away from the flies as well as the heat. 
We were ready to camp ourselves, and did so a mile 
up the river, at a bend where the Indian trail to Opetik 
was plainly marked on the trees. Here the stream, 
five or six hundred feet wide, is easy, winding in three 
or four long swings through a timbered sand plain 
with hills a mile away on each side. Some of the river 
banks are high and of sliding sand, the lower ones 
clothed with moss and alders, besides some black 
spruces, but what there are of these last, and they are 
rather scattering, grow mostly over the river plain. 
One can pass about freely almost anywhere, save for 
the damp alder places ; much of the level ground is well 
carpeted with caribou moss, the white cladonia. 

There are some few trout in all eddies below gravel 
points, but they are not always abundant, however, 
for some miles. Trout are the common fish of the 
river, often visible sculling along in the gravel shallows 



138 Labrador 

singly or in pairs, only a foot or two from shore, turn- 
ing in now and then and rubbing noses against the dry 
land, hunting the water line like deliberate spaniels. 
We saw rather few in the first ten miles. At five or 
six miles from the falls the sand plain ends and a 
strong water-worn ledge on the north side marks the 
entrance to the real river valley. This, for seventy 
miles, would be called a canon in the West. The 
steep sides drop six hundred to eight hundred feet 
almost into the river for twenty-five miles above the 
falls, and from there the headlands are more or less 
sheer to a height of ten or twelve hundred feet. All 
the side streams save at the main forks discharge in 
ribbon falls, most of them emerging from very perfect 
examples of hanging valleys, and their white ribbons 
sometimes begin to show nearly a thousand feet above 
the river. These brooks do not amount to much in 
dry times, but in the great melting period of spring 
the valley walls of the upper river must be a lively 
sight, and the rush and roar tremendous. Even in 
summer, after long rainy periods, it is not too pleasant 
to be camped near some of the high brooks. Gusts of 
wind bring the sound from some high-up overfall in 
a startling way, carrying it off again in a few seconds 
almost to stillness. The sound is rasping in the pent- 
in river valley. 

At the narrow falls near tide-water the river chokes 
back in very high water, and must be placid and lake- 
like there for a good many miles up. That year we 
left a caribou carcass on the upper beach at our first 
camp above the falls, and a year or two later I found 
the weathered skeleton unmoved, though it was on a 



1904 139 

point and especially exposed to whatever current was 
running. 

On the afternoon of our first day's travel above the 
falls the swift gravel bars were almost too much for us 
to get over, save by wading with a tracking line. By 
camping time our lumbering boat had been spitefully 
christened " The Raft," and still bears the name in 
reminiscence. She has never been taken above the 
falls since that trip. 

We camped at a slight point where spring ice had 
shoved up the river gravel. The river was swift here, 
and we looked for trout in the eddy below the point 
along the bank, where the water was still and had a little 
depth. While I was getting things going at the camp 
two or three rods back from the edge of the bank on 
a luxurious white moss level, Walcott took his grilse 
rod to the point for fish. After a while I looked out, 
but not much seemed to be doing, though W. looked all 
intent. It developed that there were " some heavy 
things in there " ; he had lost some tackle on them. His 
gut was no doubt old and brittle, for grilse tackle will 
land almost anything if sound. The sun had been hot 
and the fish taking lightly. Shortly they showed a 
better spirit and the few necessary fish came in, the best 
toward three pounds' weight. 

As darkness came on we were sitting by the fire 
when a heavy splash came from under the bank, and 
others followed. We listened, a little startled, then 
knew that it must be trout. All along the eddy they 
sounded, for a hundred yards. As my diary has it, 
" It sounded at times like a dozen muskrats on a ram- 
page, and was really startling in the still evening," 



140 Labrador 

Such an appeal to one's fishing instincts I had never 
met before. 

" We went down and fished awhile, and though it 
was rarely possible to see the flies on the water for the 
darkness, the large fish found them well enough and 
came in fast. Three or four would jump at the fly at 
once, and must have knocked each other about con- 
siderably. They were frantic. We could not use 
many, and as the mosquitoes were raging we retreated 
soon to our smoke at the tent. The splashing con- 
tinued long and began again before daylight." 

The " heavy things " that had done damage to W. 
were, I think, namaycush, the great lake trout of the 
North, which may be of almost any size and in quick 
water is a hard puller. In deep water they bore around 
and around in circles and down. Their habitat reaches 
at least as far south as a New Hampshire pond a few 
miles from the Massachusetts line. In Maine they are 
" togue," in northern New Hampshire " lunge," in 
Quebec, " tuladi," or gray trout; Indians know them 
as " kokomesh " or " namaycush." 

Caribou had walked many of the beaches, and wolves, 
though the number of individual animals concerned was 
small. An occasional fox also had run the shores, and 
a smallish bear or two. 

A mile or so above our trout camp is the Natua- 
ashish, " Little River-lake " of the Indians. It is less 
than a mile wide at the widest, and perhaps four long, 
with steep hills to the south. As no noticeable drain- 
age comes in on that side, what water there is may go 
to Side brook. Invariably, about the outlet, from one 
to four lesser sheldrakes start up, always rather wild. 

We had learned to pole together by the second day, 



1904 14.1 

and could get ahead well in the swift places. Above 
the little lake, however, an east wind came up river 
behind and a cloth of forty-five square feet took us 
along well. After six or eight miles again came a 
widening, with portentous dark cliffs which continued 
for some miles. The lake did not look as long as it 
really was, and though a sea was rising we kept on. 
Water began to come in, and there was no good place 
to land on the south side where we were. Still a good 
deal of the shore was only rock debris from the clifTs 
above and could be climbed, and we kept pretty close 
in.- The pace soon became very fast, we thought twelve 
or fourteen miles an hour. It was a wonder that every- 
thing held, but the speed relieved the strain a little. A 
smooth canoe eighteen or twenty feet long can make 
a wonderful pace before the wind, and if fairly flat 
and balanced a little high in the bow will tend to slide 
itself up over the waves. For my part I was very 
dubious along by the cliff headlands ; they did not look 
very high while ahead, nor far, but they were, and it 
seemed as if we could never reach and get by them. W. 
seemed steady ; he was used to racing boats, and I relied 
on his showing some sign if things looked half as 
doubtful to him as they did to me. A year or two 
afterward he talked about it. He had been about as 
uncomfortable as I, but knew that I had seen a good 
deal of open canoes, and I looked easy. We finally 
cleared the narrows and the wind had a chance to 
spread. It was still a Hvely lake sea, but we reached 
a sand beach without swamping. 

Knowing the place better, as the worst wind lake 
anywhere, I would not think of going into it again 
under such circumstances, though a west or northwest 



142 Labrador 

wind is probably more to be regarded there than one 
from east such as we had. The hills are shaped so as 
to collect wind from either way. Long, plough-shaped 
slopes swing around to the southwest side and concen- 
trate everything from west to north against the high 
rock faces of the narrows, and from these remarkable 
bolts of wind sometimes shoot downwards, striking 
irresistibly. When we came back through the lake we 
saw where a great ball of wind had come down on a 
timbered shelf on the north side of the narrows, knock- 
ing ever3rthing flat, then bounding over some standing 
trees to a lower shelf and apparently rolling down into 
the lake. It left the stripped white tree stems combed 
flat like grass to the water side. This may well have 
happened while we were passing, as we were too pre- 
occupied on the other side of the narrows to observe 
it, and we remembered no recent wind as strong as the 
one that day. Two or three canoes of Indians were 
struck by a gust some years ago and all were drowned. 
Their people who travel there now naturally show a 
good deal of consciousness about the place. They know 
it as Natua-ashu, a name which is generic for a river- 
lake or expansion. 

We sounded the lake just above the narrows when 
going down river, finding it two himdred and seventy- 
five feet deep at about two hundred and fifty yards 
from shore. What depths would be found further out 
is hard to say. I have always meant to take time there 
and find out, but the impulse to get through the place 
and be done with it has been too strong. 

The ice must become very thick here, swept of snow 
as it is by the gales, and it doubtless stands immovable 
against the first spring breakup. Then, apparently, 



190J,. 143 

the lake backs up for two or three miles. Upon the 
first wide levels sand and driftwood are deposited, 
higher up the gravel, this getting coarser and coarser as 
the channel narrows. For two or three miles the 
stream flows very swift, silent, and shallow over pea 
gravel which is almost as unstable as quicksand, and 
curiously bothersome to get over, whether- one paddle, 
pole, or wade. 

To the north, once past the lake, the country breaks 
back a little, with a slight valley which for once is not 
quite a hanging valley. Here, in winter, the shore 
people of one shade or another, mostly dark enough, 
leave the river for the high level to hunt deer. .Some 
say they know the river a little farther up, but if they 
do they have shocking memories for natural features. 
Even concerning the " Big Lake," the Natua-ashu, their 
descriptions are often weak. There were " Indian poles 
all around it" — but we saw not one. It is the very 
last place to camp, save when windbound, or perhaps 
at the extreme lower end. The shore people's stories 
of it are hard to account for. Sam Bromfield's son 
Abraham, one of the most presentable youths of the 
shore, asked me if what he had heard was true, that 
you could sail a trap boat all the way up into the Big 
Lake, and when you were there the shed hair of the 
seals was knee deep around the shores ! Being a seal 
hunter he was much lighted by the tale. Yet the 
seventy-five foot fall is at the very head of tide, and 
the bay people go there often. Under this fantastic 
imagination as to things inland is the demonology of 
the Eskimo, which places all sorts of evil spirits there. 

From the narrows to the main forks is four or five 
miles. The Mistastin comes in from south at right 



144 Labrador 

angles, but in two or three miles recovers its course 
from nearly west. The main river valley, more and 
more walled in, carries on straight west for some thirty 
miles more. The forks camping place, a few hundred 
yards up the Mistastin, is my favorite of all the region. 
There were many Indian poles, mostly winter ones. 
An ample white moss level, with sparse spruce and 
larch, extends south until cut off by the westward swing 
of the Mistastin, and over this plain caribou paths led 
like spokes of a wheel to our camping place at the forks. 
The few actual tracks were old. Successive fine ter- 
races extend nearly from river to river a little west of 
the forks; on the southwest the level hne of their last 
high escarpment against the sky, turning with a square 
corner up the Mistastin, is singularly fortification-like 
and imposing from points on the lower terraces. The 
dignity of the level line in landscape is rarely more 
evident than here. Back of the terraces is a sharp 
ascent to the rolling high level, here nearly a thousand 
feet above the river. 

That first afternoon we went Mistastin way, for 
it had been fabled by John Voisey that the Indians 
used that stream. It turned out shallow, rapid, and 
unboatable, running over rough boulder gravel for 
many miles. From a valley with ponds to the south 
a large rushing branch comes in and above it the Mis- 
tastin is visibly smaller, though even at the forks it is 
less than the main Assiwaban. But its valley is one 
of the main features of the country; at some time a 
great drainage has come that way. From that side 
was laid down the broad river-plain and by these 
waters were cut the terraces. 

On one of the higher terraces an Indian hunter, a 



1904- 145 

year or two before, had placed boughs on the snow to 
sit upon while he watched the wide river level for deer. 
We saw a few wolf signs about these terraces, and 
some of bear, with two broods of willow ptarmigan, 
these quite tame. 

The next day we explored the high level country 
between the rivers, a region of rolling barrens with 
small lakes. It was really unexplored ground. The 
outward route of the Indians traverses some of the 
lakes, but we saw no signs of it then. In wiry grass 
by a brook were some beautiful rock ptarmigan, run- 
ning fast with heads low, and rising suddenly with a 
cackle for their short flights. They were utterly in- 
distinguishable when motionless, simulating the stones, 
which were light colored with black and gray lichens. 
In the hand the birds seemed most conspicu'ous, with 
their large white underpatches. 

In a place among the hills that was slightly 
sheltered and had a few scattering trees we saw a half 
dozen shrikes ; I am not sure that I have ever seen more 
than one at a time before, anywhere. They eat small 
mice, and of course birds, but the horned larks which 
were about would seem too large for shrikes to man- 
age, though in numbers they could do so. But the mice 
everywhere about that year were more than abundant 
enough for all shrikes. Indians give the unpleasant 
name of Torturer to the shrike, for it plays with its vic- 
tims like a cat, picking them gradually away. To the 
eye the bird offers no suggestion of being predatory, 
much less of being revoltingly cruel. Most predatory 
creatures, however beautiful, suggest the destroyer in 
some way, by their claws or beaks or teeth at least, but 
the slight down-nib of the shrike is scarcely noticeable, 



146 Labrador 

while his gray and dark effect suggests the peaceful and 
Quakerish. In company with a mocking bird and a 
cuckoo, he would look to be a creature of about the 
same ways. It hurts to find so amiable looking a 
creature of this aspect with such bad instincts toward 
its own nearest kind. Whether or not murderers are 
usually labelled as such by Nature, we always expect 
them to be. 

In the afternoon a wolverene came loping, wood- 
chuck like, across the way, at eighty yards. W. sat 
down on the sloping ground for a steady shot and I 
whistled sharply. The animal faced and stopped. A 
handsome shot W. made, just under the chin and from 
end to end. It was a strong-looking brute. An 
autopsy proved it full of mice. We skinned it and 
took the broad skull. I chiefly had officiated, and an 
astonishing musty smell remained on my hands. To 
live it down might take weeks, I thought, but in a day 
or two it faded away. 

We were pleased over our wolverene episode, for 
one might be a long time in the country without seeing 
one, especially in summer, and it is an interesting 
species. This one may have weighed forty or fifty 
pounds. No creature is so hated in the north, for none 
is so cunning and destructive, none so hard to 
destroy. Its practice of carrying off and hiding what 
it cannot eat gives the impression of actual malice, 
especially as it burglarizes not only eatables, but all 
sorts of equipment, even to the camp kettle. Once 
snow has leveled over its tracks its hidings are safe. 
Caches have to be placed high for any security, with 
an over-hanging platform. Many an Indian, and even 
many a family, has perished by the agency of this evil 



1904- 147 

genius of the north. " We know he is possessed of 
an evil spirit," Indians say, " because he has been the 
death of so many persons." Steel traps he understands, 
and is rarely caught, but pulls out the back of the pen 
and gets the bait without penalty. He may follow a 
line of traps for forty miles, taking every bait and 
whatever game has been caught. Sometimes he is out- 
done by the " double set " — one trap set as usual, for 
him to avoid, another concealed with all art in an un- 
usual position. Stories of the occasional circumvention 
of the pest are cherished among the hunters. 

When the Indians do catch one they sometimes tor- 
ture him in mere exasperation, as well as to deter the 
other wolverenes from pursuing their evil ways, for 
by agencies we do not recognize they will know the 
victim's fate. 

The beast inspires vindictiveness in most amiable 
persons. While McKenzie was at Chimo he had some 
traps out and was troubled by a wolverene family. 
Although he managed to catch the young ones, the 
old mother was too clever for him, and he finally re- 
sorted to a spring gun with a bait, and four steel traps 
set about. When the beast pulled on the bait the gun 
only snapped without going off, but, startled, the animal 
jumped and landed in one of the traps, and by the 
time Peter came along she had picked up two or three 
more. 

Peter related that he sat down and looked at her 
awhile, then took a stick and beat her well, and so on 
for some time before he killed her. As Peter had a 
singularly amiable temperament the incident may be 
taken as showing that few dispositions can bear the 
wolverene test. 



148 Labrador 

The carrying off of things that are of no use to the 
creature concerned seems to go with an unusual degree 
of intelligence, as in the crow kind, the jays, and the 
well-known mountain rat of the West. This last 
creature, not really a rat at all, by the way, stops at 
nothing. A tent with a floor is his natural abiding 
place. Shoes, hairbrushes, all toilet things that are 
within his strength disappear under the floor of nights. 
In Idaho, long ago, one of them stripped us without 
compunction, until at last we pulled up a floor board 
and watched as we could. As we were sitting silently 
one day, the rat's furry tail was seen to move in the end 
of a joint of stovepipe. We clapped pieces of board 
over the ends of the pipe and carried it some distance 
away before letting the rat out. Intelligent, he took the 
hint and never came back. 

From the higher hills that day we observed widely. 
The Mistastin valley appeared to ascend rather rapidly 
southwest. North, across the Assiwaban, where the 
view was far, the country had almost no trees, was 
smoother and more barren, the surface less covered in. 
Our last view north and west was from a great head- 
land of the Assiwaban, some ten miles above the forks. 
This promontory is mostly sheer, and thirteen or 
fourteen hundred feet high. A golden eagle hung 
over the river, a little below our level, the sun touch- 
ing well his bronze back. He was in keeping with the 
cliffs and depths below, and the wide, barren, but in- 
spiring wilderness that stretched away at our level. 
I have seen a few eagles in the country, and none but 
of this species. 

Save for the Mistastin not one side stream, in all 
probability, comes into the river at the valley level, 



1904 149 

from tide water to the plunging falls by which the 
stream descends from the plateau. On the north side 
there are no branches at all save for inconsiderable 
umbling brooks, and the length of river I have observed 
must be as much as sixty miles in a straight line. The 
north side of the river valley is almost a wall, sloping 
or sheer, from end to end. There is nothing like a 
notch for fifty miles, and then only a V-shaped ravine, 
with a trifling brook, and rising sharply to the plateau 
level. 

It is much the same with Labrador valleys all the 
way southward around to the Saguenay, which is the 
great type of the gulf and east coast rivers. Not one 
that I know of, save the Assiwaban, but has more than 
one deep side valley in its entire length. 

Scattered over the country as they were let down 
by the ice are unnumbered erratic boulders. They are 
conspicuous on many of the ridges at a great distance. 
A curious kind of boulder occurs here and there which 
weathers down into light-brown rhomboid fragments 
the size of stove coal; they must have come from some- 
where west and north. 

Until we turned back for camp there had been some 
breeze in our faces, and no trouble from mosquitoes. 
Now they accumulated rapidly and were as bad as I 
have ever seen them even on these white moss barrens. 
They covered W.'s long back in a solid brown mass. 
He would ask me to scrape them off, but I could not 
make up my mind to do it with my hand, and always 
got a branch to clear the repulsive swarm off with. I 
did not have as many as W., my coat being smooth; 
they like fuzzy cloth and light-colored surfaces. The 
last four or five miles into camp we were hard pushed, 



150 Labrador 

came in running, and were punished well while trying 
to start a fire. 

There were a good many showers that trip, in fact 
sun-showers are the summer feature away from the 
coast, and often it took a little time to start a fire; at 
least, one of us had to hold the match until it was almost 
wholly burned. While the match was burning we 
could not brush mosquitoes without agitating the air 
and putting it out, and the enemy would settle down 
fast on our hands. Meanwhile the operator was de- 
fenseless. We agreed afterward that the most trying 
experience of the summer was having to hold the match 
until it burned out. 

The high barrens are fully as bad as any other place, 
little as they look it, and there mosquitoes are largest. 
In bushy places and sometimes close to water black 
flies are troublesome, but they go to sleep at night and 
one can get along with them, while the mosquitoes keep 
on. They try one's nerves. Low tells of one of his 
young men who was taking a round of angles some- 
where in this country ; he persevered for a time, though 
hard pressed, but finally dropped his hands and burst 
into tears — they were too much. 

If Walcott had known how he looked the first three 
days on the river he would have needed good courage 
to keep on. He was swelled up nearly to blindness; 
his nearest friend would hardly have known him. By 
the third day the swelling goes down and does not 
again appear, for that season at least. This 1904 trip 
was the worst for heat and flies of any I have had in 
the northeast. 

It is a blessed thing that mosquito torture vanishes 
easily from the mind when the actual infliction is over. 





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1904- 151 

So it was that evening- at the forks ; once in the smoke, 
and equiHbrium restored, we thought only of the inter- 
esting day. Neither of us had ever been in really un- 
explored ground before, and that day we had probably 
overlooked a thousand square miles of which it was 
impossible to get any description at the shore. It 
was not only fresh ground, but inspiring to look upon 
and walk over. A country more inviting to the feet 
would be hard to find, one never knows when to stop. 

Here the variation of the compass was about forty- 
one degrees. The place was about forty-six miles 
from the mouth of Assiwaban as we h-ad come. The 
trout here evidently belonged to Mistastin waters, bril- 
liant fish, not rangy like those of the main stream, and 
their quality was equal to their looks. 

At 4.30 in the morning we were awakened by the 
sound of a paddle working against a gunwale down 
toward the main stream.. Looking out of the tent, a 
canoe with two Indians was turning up from the main 
stream to our place. When they saw us the sound of 
the paddles quieted; it had been their door bell, for 
wilderness people do not approach one's house unnan- 
nounced. A white man might have shouted, but these 
people avoid calling out and all other sounds that startle. 
They were a man and boy in an empty -canoe, without 
arms. I knew them both from the year before, and 
was able to give them photos of themselves. There 
were seven more of them, they said, just below. They 
accepted tea and bread, but declined the bacon. The 
man took up a little -cache nearby, and a tin can which 
we had noticed just back of the tent hanging to a tree. 
We talked awhile, and .he drew a map on' the sand show- 
ing the high portage and some of the cou-ntry beyond. 



152 Labrador 

After half an hour he asked for a gun and cartridge, 
with which he promptly fired a signal shot, which was 
answered from below around the bend. Presently 
more firing came, with a peremptory sound, and our 
guests started away, we putting in and following, to 
see the rest of the party. 

A noticeable thing had happened when I showed 
them a group picture taken at the post the year before. 
They were interested and pleased, picking out the faces 
easily, until they came to one of a man who had died 
during the year. The effect was remarkable, the man 
looked almost frightened and his voice sank, 
" Tshipi," he said, " A spirit." His disquietude was 
evident. 

The people below turned out to be young men, in 
charge of a younger man I had met before, who withal 
was somewhat inflated by his temporary dignity. 
There seems to be always a chief, some one in authority, 
wherever Indians are found. 

When they saw us coming on, in the big canoe, they 
laughed at something one of them said about us. I 
doubt if it was really our bad paddling or absurd way, 
indeed, of sitting, though it may have been these. It 
is likely, rather, that they saw what guys we would be 
on the high portage with such a craft, and on the long 
portages beyond. There is no telling, however, what 
may seem the funniest thing to them when a white man 
is trying to do Indian things. 

I showed the group picture again, among others, 
and while they were interested and picking out the faces 
watched to see if they also took notice of the one who 
had died. I should have known it with my back turned, 
for the same " Tshipi " was whispered, the same silence 



IQOJi- 153 

and uneasiness came over all, and shortly they renewed 
their preparations to embark. 

Their being shaken was not very strange. To be 
presented unexpectedly with the speaking likeness of on'e 
near and intimate who has just died is naturally 
affecting to any one; it would be to one of ourselves. 
Nevertheless the extreme awe that was shown, result- 
ing in such curiously identical manifestations of 
manner and words, seemed more than one would ex- 
pect. In truth, as I came to know in time, seeing the 
picture was to their minds perilously near to seeing the 
departed. Anything belonging to a person who has 
died is in their view of most doubtful omen to the liv- 
ing; even the name is not to be spoken, and if another 
has the same name it is changed. A lapse in these 
things results in distress to the departed spirit, and it 
may be in visitations by the tshipi upon those behind. 
And ghosts, the world over, are not welcome visitors. 

We soon parted; they expected to be back in four 
days. This looked unlikely, for they could not pos- 
sibly tell how long the salt water voyage would take, 
even, though they reached Opetik that night. We 
agreed to look for them, however. 

It was W.'s first view of Naskapi ; their irresponsible 
look took him between wind and water, particularly 
certain flannel shirts, worn outside, for a deerskin 
breechcloth does not lend itself to ordinary dispositions. 
These, with their unconventional legs, were a bit un- 
usual. I explained that they merely called the shirt a 
sweater, and wore it outside. 

We went back to camp and took a day off, mending 
and knocking about near by for a few birds and fish. 
I boiled W.'s wolverene skull and cleaned it partly, 



154 Labrador 

though not enough ; it raised a fearful smell in the boat 
later. The meat looked so good boiled that I cut off 
a bit and found it perfectly eatable. The Indians eat 
it only when starving, and " Carcajou-eater "' is a fight- 
ing word in some regions ; nor will they ordinarily put 
the skin with others, but tie it to the sled somewhere 
outside. Some will not sell so hated and despised a 
thing, though they let the women trade them if they 
want to. 

The river above, to the high portage, became swifter 
and swifter, often too much so for us to pole. W. 
had a pair of lace boots, admirable for wading, and 
with his long legs would wade up the swift stretches 
as fast as I could get along the shore with a pole to 
fend off, which I did mainly to save appearances. 
There is little fishing above the forks, and what trout 
we got about the eddies near the portage were not 
much over a pound weight, that I remember. The 
portage matched the Indians' description well, and I 
felt sure it was the place, but W., who had not under- 
stood the talk, was very doubtful, as he had every right 
to be. The place looked impassably steep and high. 
Part of it is a steady, virtually pathless climb of eight 
hundred feet, the- whole height from the river up being 
eleven hundred feet. One really needs hands as well 
as feet a good deal of the way. The. finding of Indians' 
tracks leaving the river settled all questions of being 
in the right place, but we soon lost what trail there 
was and went up where the climb was over twelve 
hundred feet. The Indians use the portage only when 
going down river. We- spent some hours off west and 
southwest, seeing many ponds and the smooth, bold 
ridges of the height of land some miles beyond, but we 



190A 155 

did not see the actual divide that year. Deer tracks 
were few. There were some few ptarmigan about, 
fairly grown; we lunched off some of them beside one 
of the ponds. 

We discussed a walking trip. While it seemed fea- 
sible to get the canoe up the hill in the course of a day 
or two, it was beyond us to get it on over the long 
portages westward. If the next day, August 6th, had 
been decently cool and the flies had not been unusually 
fierce, I think we should have made a few days' walk, 
though we were rather limited as to possibilities. 
Without a canoe we could not do much with the lakes, 
and we had in mind no special objective; on the other 
hand, we could easily catch the next steamer back, and 
this was some object to us both that year. Finally 
we turned back down river again, after a swim and a 
time of drying damp outfit. There had been many 
showers, and our things had become uncompanionable. 

It was remarkable how long the distance seemed 
down the swift water to the forks, and the rough places 
looked worse than coming up. Judging by both time 
and distance we thought it must be twenty miles. 
But going down a current one follows around the very 
widest swings of such a river as i-t goes from side to 
side of the valley. We may actually have gone twenty 
miles, but a fair estimate down the middle of the 
reaches might be nearer fifteen. 

We had a little dread as the wind lake came on, lest 
it turn another gale upon us, but it stayed perfectly 
calm. We held on until eleven to get through, drop- 
ping down to sleep on a flat sand bar without a tent, 
flies or no flies. On the 7th, next day, the two great 
pools in the trout reach were full of twenty-inch fish, 



156 Labrador 

nibbling quietly at the myriad black flies which lay In 
wavy lines and patches on the water. The ripples of 
these fish looked like those of five or six inch chubs, 
taking flies carefully without showing themselves. 
But every one of those little ripples stood for near three 
pounds of fish, certainly two and a half. A very 
large one struck my fly and bored heavily down, pres- 
ently getting away with the hook and snell through a 
careless knot. In a moment there was a heavy splash 
and the fish ran on his side for the shore, shaking his 
head to get rid, of the fly. He was nearly all out of 
water for two or three hundred feet and looked at 
least six pounds. Reaching the shore he nearly 
grounded for good, but got off. He was doubtless a 
namaycush, though there is no reason why the fontinalis 
should not grow to almost any size there. This pool 
is nearly half a mile long and a thousand feet wide, a 
great feeding-ground in summer. The deep wind lake 
above must make an unusually good wintering place 
for all fish, especially during the hibernation periods 
some of them indulge in. There are whitefish in the 
river, and in 19 lo, I was interested at finding on the 
shore a ling, or fresh water cod, of sixteen inches. 
As to the size of trout, I have weighed sea trout up to 
eleven pounds at the shore, and have seen one or two 
after they were split that were surely up to fourteen. 
The bay people speak of very large fontinalis, fresh- 
water trout, in certain streams near the Assiwaban, 
and doubtless reliably, for these salt-water fishermen 
are not excitable about fish weights. 

A few miles above the falls W. saw a caribou stag 
on the shore and handsomely gave me the shot. It 
took three well-placed 30.30s to get him off his feet; 



1904 157 

they are often that way, but the 30.30 is not a smasher. 

On the morning of the 8th we passed the Indian 
portage, leaving some forty pounds of flour for the 
returning party, who were not nearly on time; it was 
more than five days since they had left us, instead of 
the four they had laid out. On the large boulders 
below the' falls were some twenty seals, left high by 
the tide and looking odd enough there, one capping 
each rock, with, head and tail far overhanging. One 
by one they slid off. We had the deer-meat and let 
them swim close without firing. 

A little thing happened at the mouth of the river 
which may have a moral. Edmund Winters and his 
large family were there fishing trout and sealing. As 
the tide was in we did not land, but Edmund followed 
us along the shore with obvious intention, s'o we turned 
in and waited. He had a pair of seal trousers he 
wanted to sell, with a little wall pocket or two made 
of loon skins, worth perhaps $2 or $3 altogether. 
We did not want them, and had nothing less than a $5 
bill. After some talk I ungraciously took them and 
handed over the bill, telling him not to think every 
Yankee traveler was going to pay double price. I 
appreciated the size of his tremendous family a little. 
Two years later I came to his place in something of a 
pickle, and he and his- wife volunteered a very good 
and unexpected turn to help me. A case of bread upon 
the waters. 

Voisey took us to Nain in his long, keelless trap boat. 
She could run and reach, but this was beating, and in 
a cold northeaster three or four degrees above freez- 
ing. We had two shivering days of it. Once we 
towed the canoe under, had to let go, and afterward 



158 Labrador 

round up a sea of scattered oars, paddles, and what 
not, in a lively slop. Again I was not sorry for having 
held on very long sometimes in the other kind of 
weather on this Jekyl-and-Hyde coast. You get chilled 
and circulationless and miserable, the back wind from 
the sails penetrates like a forced draught, which it is. 
Winter travel inland, in less clothes, at forty and fifty 
degrees below zero is nothing to it. Yet these seals of 
people who live in the bays can sit in a boat a week, 
I believe, and beat into the wind happily. 

We slept in the boat the first night. Somewhere 
on Paul's Island, where we tented comfortably the 
second night, a pair of the light-colored gyr-falcons of 
the coast shrilled fiercely in their wonderful flights 
about the cliff above us. Their nest was there. They 
are not disguised wolves in sheep's clothing, as are 
the shrikes. The expression of every feather and out- 
line, every note in their cry, is unmistakable. Fierce, 
they are beautiful, admirable. They were numerous 
that year, nesting on many cliffs of the* islands, and 
far inland. 

We were traveling by the' large passage next east 
from the one we ha.d gone south from Nain by, and 
by the middle of the forenoon, the loth, were in sight 
of Nain bay and could see our uncertain steamer if 
she came in. If we had lost her we should have been 
black enough about it. By noon we were in Nain, 
and as things were, witii four days to wait. The 
Virginia had waited three extra days for the races at 
St. John's, and laid by a day for the northeaster. We 
might have seen the height of land, and at least one 
of its great lakes, and not missed her. And the Indians. 
So we know now. 




ON THE HIGH PORTAGE. THE STEEPER PART IS BELOW 




A GOOD ROOF 



1904- 159 

Of the kindness of the mission, of the atmosphere 
of the old consecrated life there, long established, the 
old garden of weathered spruce and larch stretching 
back under the protecting hill, its paths once paced by 
feet now passed to better walks, — these things have 
been told by other pens. It was for us a peaceful time. 

W. turned from his vision of cat-like, furtive land 
savages to the sturdy, cheerful, available Eskimo, 
tamed and instructed- — with decision, and wandered 
hills with Aaron, a good man who spoke English. 

What I did has faded. I doubtless had talks on the 
wharf and lingered meanwhile on memories of what 
had been. In time W. returned, and we sat by the 
real shrine of the days, a large jar of tobacco. Even 
Aaron, with his Eskimo smile, Aaron the presentable, 
had not endured. Perhaps it was only that the shoot- 
ing he took W. for came out small, that his fish did 
not bite well. He was really a good man; still his 
English -was too good, he had once been out in the world. 

Then I took him up, with dreams of my own. 
Aaron knew the inland. He had been far in in winter, 
even to " Ungava Pond." It was a long way in, and 
very large; you could not see the shores across. It 
was a hundred miles wide. The Great Grampus lived 
there, who raised tremendous seas and hauled boats 
under. 

Here was opportunity. I began a map, carried it 
as I could myself, then brought A. into it and we pro- 
ceeded; he was definite enough and things prospered. 
I was elated. We were at it some time, working on 
rather remote territory. Then a creeping doubt came. 
Suspicious, I led very gently to ground I knew, and 
about which also he was perfectly clear. In five 



160 Labrador 

minutes it was plain that he had never been there and 
knew as good as nothing about it. I sought the wharf. 

Ungava means the farther or farthest place. For 
two or three years I was at a loss to locate Ungava 
Pond. Several of the coast rivers along were said to 
lead there. " You can go to Ungava Pond by that 
river," was said of each one. In the end I became 
satisfied that coast people had some report of Lake 
Michikamau, the source of Northwest river, and used 
it as a basis for their relations. That any Eskimo 
has ever been there is most difficult to believe. 

On this coast " pond " and " brook " are names for 
largest inland waters; " lake" and " river " are terms 
for the smaller ones. Rapids are " rattles " ; the 
reaches between are " steadies " ; falls are " overfalls." 

On the way home we were off a day at Tilt Cove, 
with its great copper mine, where Mr. Williams, the 
manager, overwhelmed us with good things. Cigars 
such as we had almost forgotten were opened, and 
other things, with unwonted sounds as of popping. 
On the Clyde, to Lewisport, were Mr. Berteau and Mr. 
White, of St. John's. One is never very far from 
home connections, for the former proved to be a far 
cousin; his grandmother was a Cabot in our island of 
Jersey. Altogether, save for the flies and the im- 
movable canoe, yclept Raft, the world did us well 
that year. 



CHAPTER VII 
1905 

August of 1905 found two hard-working travelers 
again inching their way up the high portage of the 
Assiwaban. The place is without doubt one of the 
harder places of Canada to deal with when one is 
under a pack. For myself the last pull to the top 
came near being too much. I half gave up, crawled 
around the slope until I found water, then, revived, 
finished out. It was a warm, breathless day. My 
companion, Lewis Quackenbush, of New York, a 
young, strong man of a good deal of southern-slope 
experience, did better than I. We took up only one 
load a day. The canoe, a good birch of fairly por- 
table weight, we got off rather easily with, passing it 
from one to the other and each going light between 
turns. In going down the place on the return journey, 
one of us fell while crossing a rock-slide and dropped 
the canoe, but it was not hurt to speak of. 

The outfit was all up the 5th of August, and we 

camped a mile on at the second pond. Trout of six 

or eight inches took the fly well ; deep little fish of 

electric quickness, very dark on the back and very 

yellow beneath, like those of the Newfoundland ponds. 

They may belong to a subspecies, which may include 

also the bright Mistastin trout. I regret not saving 

specimens. 

161 



162 Labrador 

One expects the fish of such far waters that have 
never known the hook to be wholly without caution, 
but even these small fish, eager enough at first, became 
noticeably wary of the fly by the time a meal or two 
of them had been caught. So it is almost everywhere 
by daylight, though at dusk or even in darkness trout 
seem to lose all reason. They will take ordinary worm 
bait on exceptionally dark nights from Maine to La- 
brador, 

Rambling about near a pond a little south of our 
route, we came upon a low set of lodge poles, such as 
the Indians use for their small skin traveling tents. 
A spray of evergreen had been placed where the poles 
joined at the top. This was their date record. Any 
one following could tell by the fading of the twigs 
very nearly when the party had camped there. 

These skin traveling tents are shaped like a broad 
collar when laid out flat. They will not catch fire, 
being indeed about the only kind of small tent in which 
one can have an open fire without calamity. More- 
over, they have the advantage of stretching into almost 
any shape, and even size. 

We went on heavy loaded and very slowly, making 
triple portages between the ponds. The canoe was 
rather overweight, even in this my third year of pre- 
paration for the country. When dry it may not have 
weighed over seventy-five pounds, but a birch takes 
up water with continuous use, and with the paddles 
this one carried heavier than it ought to. As to pro- 
visions, it is well to have plenty, for they can be dis- 
carded at any time if game proves reliable, but the 
full amount we had did give us hard work on those 
first wet portages. 



1905 163 

In the spring I had ordered a canvas canoe, to be 
especially light, though deep, from a maker whom I 
will not expose. The outcome was the worst-looking 
boxy affair I ever saw, weighing sixty-eight pounds. 
Probably half the weight was in paint and "filler," 
the latter virtually paint too. Sixty-eight pounds is 
not so bad, but the timbering was very light, and Q. 
thought the whole fabric might dissolve under us. 
His birch, from Lake St, John, on the Saguenay, was 
as good as a birch could be, so we cached my craft 
above Assiwaban Falls and kept along in his. It is 
fair to say that Q. did most of the canoe carrying. 
He was tall, strong, and weighty, and could carry in a 
wind when I could not. My canoe would have taken 
up little or no water, and kept its lightness, especially 
as it would have kept dry inside; a birch will never 
keep wholly dry on a shallow, stony route. 

There had been a good deal of ice coming north. 
The usual pack at Harrigan was solid on the land the 
22d of July, hard, green salt-water ice, more or less 
rafted. Some tourist passengers wanted to go on to 
see Nain, and for two or three hours the Virginia 
rammed the pack with a will. She would back up a 
few lengths, head for the weakest place, and fetch 
up with a heavy boom. A wonderful sealer's hull she 
had, unsparing of material, greenheart sheathed and 
doubly ironed about the sloping bow. Like a crow- 
bar she rammed her way, scarcely quivering as she 
fetched up short. No one minded the bow, it could 
take care of itself. Directed at a weak place not too 
high above water it would merely lift a little and stop. 
Sometimes the edge of the pan would sink or split and 
pass to the sides, but the bow stood all and everything. 



164 Labrador 

The stern, the vulnerable heel, was another matter. 
There, and not at the bow, were stationed the sharper 
eyes of the boat. On each side a man watched keenly 
the clear depths, lest the ice that kept swinging into 
the open space astern should foul the screw before it 
could be stopped. Some of the flinty green walls ran 
down twenty-odd feet, perhaps thirty. A moderate 
touch of the screw to one of the harder under tongues 
and we were helpless. It was all in vain, we could see 
Fanny's, but never reached it. The experience was 
a touch of the real Arctic. The dank chill of the 
pack was penetrating. Near by on the ice at one place 
was a large shark, hauled out who knows where in the 
north by Eskimo. Seventy or eighty bergs stood in a 
long crescent beginning near us to the north and sweep- 
ing far around toward the west, and the black deso- 
lation of the high, snow-streaked land against the 
evening sky completed the Arctic aspect. It was the 
22d of July. 

The enthusiasm of the passengers to reach Nain, 
as a sort of Farthest North possible, was not so keen 
by the time we turned back. They had had their 
taste of the real thing, on a safe scale, and were pretty 
well satisfied. As the novelty wore away, the boom 
and impact and throw of the vessel became tiresome, 
if not suggestive of untoward happenings. The pack 
we had approached with eagerness had become a 
forbidding world of ice. A friend at home, who once 
steamed to the edge of the polar ice field from Norway, 
has related that some of the party were so overwhelmed 
at the cruel sight as to burst into tears. Shrinking to 
the cabin they remained there until the vessel steamed 
away and the ice was well behind. 




INDIAN CAMP IN THE BARRENS 




A TRAVELING TENT 



1905 165 

By the time the long twihght came on we had had 
more than enough of the ice, and were ready to take 
to the cabin ourselves. But all was not over. The 
North had yet to make its parting, in a way we little 
thought. As we were about to go below, leaving those 
who could deal with the situation to do so, there fell 
across the sea from some distant horizon around the 
cape an afterlight of the sunset, touching with warm 
color a few heaved-up points of the ice field and calling 
into fine rose the whole far-stretching crescent of 
bergs. In the gray waste they had been all but indis- 
tinguishable before. Now, in subdued exquisite flame 
they came forth over the plain. From a chill desola- 
tion the scene was transformed as few places of earth 
ever are. The ice world was become a vision untold. 

At three next morning we were dropped overside 
behind the Cape Island, in Windy Tickle, and the 
steamer returned south. As it happened to be Sunday 
we did not care to make a start, and piling our things 
on the shore, we walked across the island to Spracklin's, 
where all were " ready for the rush " — of cod. There 
were no fish coming in, of course, though the water 
was said to be " full of them." The ice was piled up 
in the harbor entrance. 

Next morning the ice had loosened, though as we 
pulled out of the Tickle to the north it looked as dense 
as ever outside. Soon two schooners came up behind 
on the south breeze and entered the pack near us to 
seaward. They might as well have tried to plough 
the land, as it looked to me, but they never quite came 
to a stop, as I remember, and surprisingly soon had a 
good offing. By night the pack had really begun to 
string off. 



166 Labrador 

During the next four days we worked our way some 
seventy-five miles to the Assiwaban. At times the 
floating bits of ice made the rowing backward annoy- 
ing. The larger ice lodged outside the islands, shut- 
ting out all swell, all feel of the sea; we were traveling 
in level salt water lakes. The more open bays were 
well lined with pack ice and bits of berg, streaming with 
water in the sun and wearing away rapidly between 
tides, for in the long days the water warmed in the 
inner shallows and coming out with the tide undercut 
the grounded masses. At low tide some overhanging 
shelf of several tons' weight would break off and fall 
six or seven feet flat to the water with a report like 
a field gun. All night this artillery would keep up, 
here and there about the open bays, and the splash 
something to be regarded. Any of the higher ice was 
likely to turn over at any time. Once an under-water 
table began to lift as I was passing over it, and I had 
to pull fast to get away. It would be -no- joke to get 
hove up that way and dropped into a lot of churning 
fragments. 

Wonderful, often fantastic, are the shapes of the 
ice. Through one narrow berg fragments had been 
perforated a row of handsome arches, curiously alike. 
A mushroom form was common, the stem being shaped 
by the wash of the warm waves as the tides came and 
went. All the nights had their strong aurora. We 
lay upon the smooth moss of the beaches and slept 
under its splendor. On those calm nights the cold 
air over the icy sea of the archipelago met the warm air 
of the inland as in a wall. Then would appear a 
marvelous waving band following high over the shore 
line, a great scroll rolling and unrolling from horizon 



1905 167 

to horizon. Folding and unfolding it stretched from 
northwest to southeast. We never felt like turning 
in to sleep in its presence; again and again we would 
uncover our faces for a last look. How far it ex- 
tended in such times of widespread calm would be 
hard to say. Around the continental north, perhaps, its 
white wraith shone, a map supernal of the sub-arctic 
shores. 

At Un'sekat we stopped. I had not been there since 
Antone and I sailed away that dark day two years 
before. Only Mrs. A. and the daughter were there 
at the time. There was not very much to say, we 
were two white travelers and imposed our atmosphere ; 
the trout were good. It was still early, and we pushed 
along a bay before camping, while the weather served. 

Up Voisey's bay next morning we had a following 
wind. It was interesting to see how the two canoes 
compared with each other. Mine was as smooth as 
a piano, and when rowed in calm water went well. 
Under sail, too, and our sails were exactly alike, she 
would draw away from the birch. But let a little sea 
come on and her broad bilges begin to pat, and the 
half-mysterious lines of the Indian birch told. She 
was designed. If the birch had had the smoothness of 
my boat she would easily have passed ahead at all 
times. 

There were fish enough up through the river, none 
of more than four pounds. O. did most of the poling, 
he was better at it than I, and the birch did not pole 
very well; she had a paddling model. I would walk 
the bank along the rapids, mostly to lighten the boat. 
The sand beaches carried some tracks. Wolves seemed 
numerous, though we saw none, nor heard them nights. 



168 Labrador 

We may have seen the tracks of a hundred or two dur- 
ing the trip. 

We were both doubtful sleepers, none the less so in 
mosquito country, and during the first of the trip 
found it well to stop early and put up good defenses 
for the night. So it was that when we found calm 
water in the wind lake we camped with the worst place 
ahead of us, although it was long before sunset. Q. 
could hardly believe that so small-appearing and calm 
a water need be much regarded. But it is not for 
nothing that this is held to be one of the places where 
the Great Grampus is in charge, for with a norther 
which came on over night we were half a day, wet and 
devilled about by the backwash from the long swing 
of the rocky north portal, before being safe out of 
the lake. Five times now I have gone through the 
place on perfectly flat water; five times, on the other 
hand, the Grampus has lashed his tail; five times the 
Indians' underwater people have been awake. People 
of the open know that only when these powers of the 
water places are occupied or asleep should one try to 
travel. A good offering to them, at least, is indis- 
pensable. 

Two or three miles above the lake a canoe with three 
Indians shot around the far bend. They turned in 
and we met at the bank. I knew them all, Ostinitsu, 
Pah-kuun-noh, and, now a young man, Nah-payo, or, 
Nah-harpao, the " One-who-sees-far," Old O's name 
means, inappropriately now, " The Young Man," and 
P.'s the " Man-of-the-sea," or Sailor-man. Before 
making a fire they cautiously placed a circle of wet 
sand on the moss, for the weather was dry, and only 
white men burn their own country. We had a good 




GUESTS 




BARREN GROUND LAKE, TSHINUTIVISH, 1906 



1905 169 

luncheon ; they were glad to have our tobacco, tea, and 
sugar, with the other things on our list. Deer, they 
said, were scarce at Tshinutivis, but they had enough 
fish. The water had been hard. They were thin and 
looked overworked. It was a friendly meal, and they 
stood the camera well enough afterward; as usual the 
old man winced a little. 

Off they went, with no gun, having only a deer spear 
in the boat and not much fur, making fast time with 
their three paddles. The boat was a birch of some 
power, built by O. himself. " Ehe," he had said, " As- 
tulan." " Yes, I build canoes," They sat low, hard 
down on their heels, and flew down the current for the 
great portal. 

There were no recent deer tracks at the forks. 
Above there, sometimes, a fresh track slanted down 
one of the high cut banks, visible in the sliding sand 
from a half mile away. Sometimes there were two 
tracks, a little apart and parallel, as caribou best like 
to go. 

Mosquitoes were much as of old, the trip through. 
Q., in the assurance of long experience on the southern 
slope of far trips up Peribonka and other rivers of the 
Saguenay basin, had regarded with some indifference 
my display of fly protectives, — gloves and veil and 
kerchiefs and tar grease, and my net-fronted helmet for 
nights. I folded them all away and bided the future. 
Somewhere along the river the evil day came. Q. 
was tall and strong and energetic, a figure in the open. 
When the time came his shock of hair stood all ways, 
and he swung his long arms like flails. " You told 
me ! You told me how it would be ! But I never 
dreamed anything about it! " 



170 Labrador 

As we entered the unknown country west we were 
a little the worse for wear. Coming from the steamer 
soft and out of training we had fallen upon the long 
pull up the coast, with some head wind, and this get- 
ting from the steamer to the Assiwaban, which could 
have been done in one easy day from Nain, if our plans 
to leave the steamer there had worked out, had taken 
the first freshness out of us. It was the old story, 
men from town fall away at first under heavy work. 
One depends on the first days of physical fizz and en- 
thusiasm to get an offing, but these were now used 
up, and although an easy four or five days along the 
river would have restored the balance, we did not feel 
like taking the time, late as we were. Once on the port- 
ages of the high inland, the canoe felt heavy, and the 
outfit too. The assurance that went with having these 
things meant a great deal to Q. ; he preferred to travel 
with all chances eliminated, so far as possible, and was 
willing to carry the weight. The shadow of Hubbard's 
history was a little in the air then. 

Wet weather came on at our second camp on the 
highlands. A shower was coming when we landed 
at the head of a pond, and as usual we simply lay down 
with the tent laid over us and waited. For more than 
an hour the water came down as it rarely does there. 
Gradually the little brooks from the folds of the tent 
worked inside and found us, and in time, wet enough, 
we put up the tent. It had seemed as if the pour would 
never stop. Once the tent was standing, of course 
the rain let up, and a cold north wind came on with 
finer rain. There was not much wood, it was hard 
to get dried out. In the morning we took over a 
load to the next lake, perhaps a mile and a half, largely 



1905 171 

through bogs now afloat. The brown waterproof 
bags, a provision of Q.'s, were saving things then. 
They are invincible. Poured full of flour one of them 
lay out two nights and a day in the rain and was none 
the worse. They carried beautifully well, too. 
Through the day we got an occasional spreading stump 
from the neighborhood, and kept a fire until three or 
four in the afternoon. It is a curious thing that we 
stood propped on our legs by that fire practically all 
that day, torpid, and never thought to get something 
to sit on. We merely turned one damp side to the 
fire and then the other, standing. At last we got a 
meal, and slept a long, flyless night. 

Mornings and evenings there came a curious, lamb- 
like bleating from the scrub down at the end of the 
pond; for a time we could not make it out. It came 
from willow ptarmigan. The bushes were nearly like 
a henyard with feathers, and we saw a good many 
birds, large and able to fly well now. They were every- 
where where there was any cover that year ; one ought 
to have picked up forty or fifty in two or three hours 
of kicking about the scrub places. Slight cover of 
some sort occurs in a good many places, although most 
of the country along this reach is barren and monoto- 
nous, and peculiarly desolate and unattractive in dark 
weather. 

The difference between the walking in really wet 
weather and dry is very great. No country need be 
better than this is in continued dry weather, when even 
the lower grounds between ponds are perfectly pas- 
sable, though sometimes uneven with tussocks and 
large stones, or somewhat quaking when one goes 
over with a heavy load on; the general country is 



172 Labrador 

open and but for field-stone boulders might do in places 
for a motor car. 

A few days' rain and the slipperiness and puddling 
tendency of the light felspathic soil changes the foot- 
ing abominably. The swamps go afloat, one gyrates 
from boulder to boulder with heavy wrenching strains 
from the pack, or has to hoist oneself and load from 
some swashy black puddle to a stone a foot and a half 
above and step down into the mud again, turning and 
stretching and sidestepping in a most exhausting way. 
Better a mile of firm, even ground than a hundred feet 
of this. Nor, again, are some of the quaking bogs 
anything of the easiest to take a load over in a wet 
time. 

This camp of the northeast weather and the portage 
beyond were of the soaky kind. There is a Camp 
Misery somewhere in every one's trip, and though 
there was nothing particularly salient on this occasion, 
or novel to either of us, we were just thoroughly un- 
comfortable for a day or two, and the swampy portage 
was wearing. Somewhere in it I found where one of 
the three Indians had sat on a boulder to rest, leaving 
a pair of deep footprints when he rose to his feet to 
go on with his load. Their canoe looked to weigh a 
hundred and twenty-five pounds, and they were light 
men. There was no trail, for in swampy places each 
man of a party seeks an untrodden way as being firmer 
than if puddled up by another traveler. The mat of 
the bog becomes weakened by repeated passing and 
may go through. In fact, as to anything like a beaten 
path, there cannot be more than four or five miles 
of it that really helps one on the whole Indian route 
from the coast to the George. 



1905 173 

We lunched at the end of a long, narrow pond run- 
ning near west, and emptying into a Mistastin branch. 
Up to this time the drainage had been eastward toward 
the high portage. While we were eating Q. noticed 
a black bear seven or eight hundred yards away on an 
easy slope. He was so black as to be almost luminous 
against the white moss country. By his sudden moves 
and snatches he appeared to be mousing. They turn 
up stones and bits of grovind for the mice, and are 
better at the cat's game than one would think from 
their figure and size; they are sometimes very funny 
at it. After awhile the bear came into broken ground 
and in range of a large boulder, so that we were able 
to make an approach, when Q. fired two or three shots 
from his Savage rifle, and we found our victim down 
presently in a little hollow. We had been fairly con- 
cealed, and what with the smokeless powder and slight 
reports, he never knew where we were. 

He was not a large bear, but perhaps as much as 
three hundred pounds in weight, being almost as broad 
as a woodchuck. His weight was mainly a matter of 
fat; it was two inches deep over the back and plenty 
everywhere it could be, inside and out". Like almost 
everything else in the country that could eat mice, the 
bear was full of them. The next year, a hard year for 
the bears, for there were no mice, I shot one half as 
large again in frame, but it was not much heavier; 
there was no fat whatever on him. 

The coming in of a stock of good bear meat cheered 
our way. In the warm weather the fat fell from 
perfect sweetness in about a day, but the meat itself was 
extremely good as long as it lasted. 

The pond of our little hunt, narrow and about two 



174 Labrador 

miles long, we called Bear pond. A northwester 
began to blow as we put off, growing to a very strong 
gale, and though it would hardly seem possible to be- 
come windbound on a narrow pond of this size, get- 
ting ahead was so slow and hard, that we actually 
stopped and camped in a nearly woodless place half 
way to the end. There was no putting up a tent, if 
only for want of poles. In the two days we were there 
we used up the firewood for a long distance around, 
though the cooking took little, and the camp was nearly 
shelterless. Close up under a httle fringe of scrub 
evergreen, a foot and a half high, we had the fire and 
the cooking things; and behind the only other growth 
of the kind about we slept. So protected, the night 
showers blew over us very well. We were comfortable 
enough, but it is a bleak, windy, exposed country along 
there, and one may have a real norther with snow any 
night. 

The first afternoon we wandered off west a mile or 
two to some trees, looking at the country and for 
game. There was little sign of deer about. Upon a 
good rise to see from was a great boulder, some ten 
feet high, riven by frost or some internal stress into 
fragments with fissures of some size between. I 
climbed up, but while meditating on the wide stretch 
of country and the many lakes, a strong, growling sigh 
came from exactly under me inside the rock, and I got 
down in a hurry. It is absurd how those sudden four- 
footed sounds awake old instincts to dodge. It was 
only an arctic fox. We could see his dingy summer 
tail through a large fissure, but it moved in farther 
and out of sight when touched with a stick. 

The wind blew again next day and we put in the 



1905 175 

time afoot, mainly exploring for the route. Some 
five miles northwest was a commanding hill of smooth 
slopes to which we beat up against the gale. There 
were two visible water routes in that direction, but 
we could find no signs of travel. We were ver}^ close 
to some, if we had known it; but the route here, 
in a general way westerly, turns sharply south for a 
mile and a half and is easy to miss. Beyond the high 
hill, known after 1906 as Caribou Hill, was a fine 
broad lake. Southeast, and about the rolling plain 
generally, were forty or fifty lakes and ponds up to 
four or five miles long. Still a third route used by 
Indians led south, then west, if we had known, but 
it was masked from us by a high ridge. The locality 
was confusing, with its hills and many ponds. The 
views we took from the hill show little, for in north 
winds the water looks nearly black from above and 
photographs badly; at such times the longer slopes of 
the waves are in shadow, while with wind from the 
direction of the sun they are lighted. As to finding 
our route we were little better off at night than in 
the morning. By evening the wind went down. We 
fished a little, mainly to find out what there was in 
the pond, but, surprisingly for that country, had not 
a bite. After supper an interesting fish near two feet 
long appeared at the edge of the water, but it had 
moved out too far by the time Q. could get his rifle 
and shoot at it. It looked like a whitefish or white 
sucker. Some sizable pieces of bear fat we had pitched 
out on the water soon began to wabble and finally 
disappeared, but we did not see just how. They 
may have sunk. 

As I was knocking about the place in the morning. 



176 Labrador 

Q. still asleep, the three Indians we had met in the 
river valley came almost alongside before I saw them. 
We turned over our provisions to them and they made 
a meal, eating much bear but avoiding the fat. They 
were quite in distress. The Pelican had not come, 
the store was almost bare, and they had been un- 
able to get much; no ammunition, tobacco, nor much 
of anything ; could we let them have some powder and 
shot and tobacco? Of course we stripped ourselves 
of what we could possibly spare. Then we talked 
about the route and finally arranged with them to help 
us as far as Mistinipi Lake, if we would not take too 
much luggage. I took a large waterproof bag and 
began to put things into it, the heavier things. As 
it filled up they looked uneasy, and as I remember 
demurred audibly. Their relief when I finally jammed 
the heavy bag under the scrub to be left behind was 
easy to see. Off we went, they having little of their 
own to carry, and taking some of our things, we doing 
what we could. It was a warm day of gathering dul- 
ness, with flies. The Indians were naturally faster 
than we were, with their long canoe and three pad- 
dles. " Mauats tshilipi ! " I exhorted old O. " Do 
not hurry! " " Mauats! " he answered, and kept his 
word. On Long Lake we gradually accumoilated a 
cloud of mosquitoes. About the other canoes, fifty 
feet ahead, they appeared as a bluish nimbus, five or 
six feet across. I had never seen mosquitoes visible at 
a distance in that way. Yet I thought the Indians got 
only about half the actual bites we did, ordinarily. 
Where a mosquito would pitch upon one of our hands 
without hesitation, wasplike and end on, it would pause 
and hover a little over the skin of an Indian and light 




2 

1—4 

H 



1905 177 

quietly. The canoes went abreast for a time, and 
looking across I noticed that old O. had done up his 
head in a piece of black netting I had given him; he 
seemed glad to have it. Likewise Indians are ready 
to accept tar grease after seeing white men use it. 
They are keen, indeed, to see the advantage of al- 
most any new thing and to make the most of it. 

Two or three times while we were with them one 
of them would go ashore, pull out some dried meat 
from under a rock, and carry it back to the canoe. 
They had provided for their return trip in this way. 
There was a rifle in their boat now, which had prob- 
ably been cached somewhere near where we met them 
first, or perhaps it had been at the post for repairs. 
They do not seem to have faculty about metal work; 
William Edmunds, with the Eskimo superiority in 
such matters, used to fix up their guns for them. 

Of course the main work came on the land portages. 
Q. carried the canoe, I a stout pack on a headstrap. 
The Indians carried on a line over the head and an- 
other over the front of the shoulders, over which was 
thrown a blanket to take the cut of this line. On 
the head they placed a bunch of evergreen twigs to 
take away the cut there of the string. They told me, 
rightly, that a headstrap alone, as I had it, was not 
the thing, but I did not venture a change that trip. 
Their carrying lines were mostly of caribou leather, 
braided round, a little larger than heavy cod line, say 
three sixteenths of an inch or more in diameter. In 
resting we sat down in file on the ground, each man 
ahead of a boulder, which took the weight of his pack. 
All one could see looking ahead was a line of large 
bundles on boulders, with no person in sight. Then 



178 Labrador 

all the packs would rise up and move on in procession, 
each with a thin pair of legs stepping along under it. 

Old O. and I took things much alike. If there was 
an extra turn to make over the portage one of the 
younger men did it. O., strong as he was, would 
nevertheless have enough of the job by the time our 
canoe was over and was content to drop on the moss 
and rest. Young Na'pao, fifty pounds lighter, would 
trot over with their large canoe, perhaps for his sec- 
ond trip over the portage, and, untouched, would 
stand at the edge of the water and throw stones. The 
Indians could have circled around us as we went. 

Late in the day I felt pretty well steadied down, 
and noticed that O. seemed to have about the same 
gait. " Aieskushin-ah ? " I asked, "Are you tired?" 
" Ehe," " Yes," he said, simply. I was a little sur- 
prised, for it is not easy to get Indians, as I know them, 
to own up to being tired. They are " hungry," gener- 
ally, that is all. The difference is not so much, for as 
an old Matterhorn man once said, " If you see a man 
giving out, feed him ! " 

We passed through seven or eight ponds that day, 
camping late on a small lake where were a few trees. 
The route from Long Lake had been shut in among 
close hills and the ponds and streams between were 
small. Ledges were rare, the hills being ground 
smooth by ice-cap action and then more or less carpeted 
by the thin moss. Where rock showed it was often 
marked by glacial scratches, and was harder than the 
felspathic or eruptive base of the more open country 
toward the coast. 

At the little lake where we finally stopped O. walked 
up with his axe to the largest of a few scattered trees 



1905 179 

about. It had live branches sloping downward to 
the ground. On the side away from a possible north 
storm he trimmed off enough low branches to be able 
to get in alongside to the trunk, and then thatched 
in overhead the palm-like boughs he had cut off, plac- 
ing them at a steep angle. Here, close to the trunk, 
the three Indians slept, using their little leather tent, 
a flat affair shaped like an Eton collar six or seven feet 
wide, for an additional blanket. Though it showered 
in the night they were perfectly well sheltered. We, 
likewise, used our tent as a blanket, and came off 
fairly well. 

We were stirring in the gray of the morning. Pa- 
kuunnoh washed his hands in the lake without soap 
and got breakfast. Their hands seem never grimy 
or to need care. They kept the dishes clean, the few 
that there were. At luncheon the day before I had 
handed our tin pail to Pakuunnoh to make tea. He 
took off the cover and turned away to get water, but 
I noticed, though he was looking off absently, that he 
furtively touched his finger tips to the inside of the 
pail. They stuck a trifle, we had boiled fat bear in it 
and not done our washing too well. Pakuunnoh 
grunted significantly, went silently to the water and 
scrubbed the pail out well. 

As we were putting out from shore, about five, 
Q.'s hunter eyes caught a caribou stag walking up a 
distant sky line. He and Napao went after it and 
surprisingly soon brought back the meat. The stag 
appeared to have sought the top of a ridge to get its 
ruminating doze away from flies. The horns were of 
course in velvet at that time. Napao had tried Q.'s 
soul while cutting up the deer by slashing into the 



180 Labrador 

flinty bones with his fine, hard-tempered knife and 
taking out Hberal nicks. The Indian knives and axes 
are soft enough to sharpen with a file and do not 
chip. 

At the end of the lake we had to leave some of the 
meat for our return. I did not know just what to do 
with it and asked the Indians to cache it for us. P. 
walked up to a little thick-topped evergreen and shoved 
it in among the branches ; away from the ground on 
account of the smaller animals, out of sight, on the 
other hand, from the ravens and jays. " Shetshi- 
mao ! " I objected, " The flies ! " " Mauats shetshi- 
mao," " No flies," P. returned. When we came back 
four or five days later, there were some small fly- 
blows on it, but no harm done. But we had had a 
very cold storm meanwhile, and if it had been warmer 
there would have been trouble, I should say. Still, 
without the storm we should have been back much 
sooner, and this the Indians may have reckoned on. 

The height of land came at the head of a fine lake 
four or five miles long, which we called Hawk Lake, 
from the falcons' nests on some moderate cliffs near 
the narrows. The falcons bred on almost all cliffs 
that year, from the coast in. The actual height of 
land was a broad, low saddle with a trifling valley or 
draw through it, and a tiny pond or two. The portage, 
over smooth, velvety ground, was only thirty or forty 
feet above the lakes on either side and was little more 
than a half mile long. Now we were on George River 
water, a handsome, deep-looking lake with some high 
cliff shores on the south, and some two miles in length. 
A rugged portage of two miles, partly on a bad path, 
brought us to the long eastern tail of Mistinipi. Here, 




H 
O 



1905 181 

under the sheltering height of land hills to the north- 
east, quite a belt of trees stretched along the right 
shore. The savage Baffin's Bay influences were visi- 
bly less on this side of the watershed. The trees were 
often straight, in contrast to the desperate gnarled 
shapes of the Atlantic side. But it was only special 
sheltered places that showed normal trees; almost 
everywhere the winter winds from northwest had had 
a blasting touch, for the trend of the lake basin is that 
way. On the south for some miles were wonderful 
smooth gravel levels, with moss-terraced moraines, 
and pairs of caribou paths following along the slopes 
and in places slanting to the water. 

It was very warm that afternoon, close and over- 
cast. Heavy, straight-down showers came now and 
then, during which we got under rocks or spruces or 
the boats, as best we might. A mile down Mistinipi 
is a close narrows, then a fairly wide water, and be- 
yond this the lake is two miles wide or more. Then 
comes the main narrows, where, as another heavy pour 
came on, we all ran for a cove on the south side. 
When the rain let up we had a fire and a meal. This 
last part of the day continued warm and overshadowed, 
the air hanging with moisture. Something was brew- 
ing. The Indians were uneasy to be off. To the 
last Q and I argued about going with them. Os- 
tinitsu urged us to come along to their camp, saying 
that it was " mauats katak," ^ not very far. We had 
enough food to get there, but not to come back on. I 
had no doubt whatever that the Indians would see us 
provided, but when I tried to explain that we wanted 
to be sure of supplies to come back with they seemed 
1 Mowats kah-tark. 



182 Labrador 

confused. I take it they could not imagine our ask- 
ing such a question. It is certain that as invited guests 
they would have seen us provided, even if they ran 
short themselves in doing it. If we got delayed coming 
back it would not hurt us to miss a meal anyway. But 
after all we gave up going. In the end I told Ostinitsu 
thtat we had to catch a steamer, and so he told Mrs. 
Hubbard's party two or three days later on George 
River. 

They had accepted the leg bones of the caribou, but 
left the meat for us. I doubt their caring much for 
the fresh meat as compared with the dry, but in any 
event they never neglect the marrowbones. In the mix 
of separating our things they left the bones after all, 
so we ran across a little neck and called to them. They 
took the bones with faces averted, Naskapi fashion, 
and drove away for the wide lake without a word. It 
was a poor parting from people who had been com- 
panionable and kind, no less helpful and interesting. 
Q. and I went back to our fire in silence, wet and tired 
and not happy. 

Ostinitsu had said that it would not rain much more, 
when I was discussing the difficulties of our going on, 
but he was never more mistaken, though to tell the 
truth I think he shaped his words to his wishes for 
once. However this may have been, a three days' 
norther set in, blowing up the narrows and across our 
slightly timbered point until our tent nearly flapped 
away. Occasionally the hills would whiten with snow, 
not to stay long, and again the fine rain would drive 
with the gusts. The backward eddying of the wind 
carried sparks against the hot front of the tent when- 
ever our fire was near enough to be in any way worth 



1905 183 

having, and the burnt holes gradually increased our 
ventilation. The tent was Egyptian cotton, " balloon 
silk," which is strong, light, tight, and unabsorbent, 
but when hot catches fire like tinder. From a mere 
spark the burning spreads fast, with white smoke. 
It was a mean time, adding for me a memorable one 
to the cold, wretched northers and northeasters of a 
camping lifetime. One cooks httle, eats cold, every- 
thing gets slinky, and the wet chill of the air gets 
into one's bones and disposition. If they lasted long 
enough one would give up. No wonder that among 
all the Indians Death comes from the northeast. 

For a time on the second forenoon the rain was only 
mist, though the wind held strong and cold. We went 
to a hill some way southwest and looked down into a 
pretty pond, with caribou roads on a fine moss slope 
beyond. This is the heart of the northeastern range 
of the deer, in all its subarctic perfection. Even in 
the thick, dark weather the hills and lakes held our 
eyes. We wera the first there of our race. The 
region is perhaps the fair spot of all the Labrador 
peninsula. If it had been clear we should have gone 
farther and seen the actual escarpments of George 
River, at perhaps twenty-five miles distance as the 
raven flies. 

From the narrows the lake opens broad to the west, 
and from the hills we were on one can see well toward 
the head of the main lake, say a dozen miles. There 
were ptarmigan in some broken ground near camp, 
gathered among some sheltering spruces. A strong 
rufous tint prevails in the young birds at this time, 
especially toward the head. 

The third day the wind eased, and we danced across 



184 Labrador 

the lively narrows, uneasily, stopping, heading up 
into the gusts, making a side move when we could; 
all with enough misgivings, for at any time a jfinal 
blast from the wide lake might concentrate in the 
narrows to our grief. Once under the northern lee 
our way eastward was sheltered; then the sky bright- 
ened and by afternoon we were on smaller waters. 
At Hawk Lake the wind and a slight rain blew straight 
on shore from north; we had no choice but to stop. 
For an hour we wandered about the smooth glaciated 
valleys to find some sheltered spot, enough of a lee 
for two men to get behind. Not a bush, not a rock 
was available. All uprising surfaces, great and small, 
were ground smooth and rounded, and the wind swept 
every one, no matter what way it faced. Giving up, 
we returned to the lake. A little crest of sand two feet 
high had been pushed up by ice, a slight harricado, 
vertical on the land side. Behind this we made a 
fire and cooked. When we sat up straight the wind 
and rai.n cut our ears, but half lying we were well 
sheltered. After supper we raked away the fire and 
made our bed where it had been, the only spot not 
reached by the wind. But the little rampart served, we 
kept close under its straight side, held from caving 
by a lacing of moss, and the rain blew on over us. 

The night over, the weather turned warmer. We 
had forgotten the existence of flies, but all in an hour of 
sun they rose from the moss, active, numerous, and 
apparently keener of appetite from the cold spell. It 
is said that they are properly vegetarians, but none of 
these seemed to waste its time looking for anything but 
ourselves. As compared with the people of the coun- 



1905 185 

try, however, they may well have regarded us as green 
things. 

The lengthening portages toward the Assiwaban, wet 
as they were, taxed us a good deal ; never have I drawn 
the reserve lower. The wind lake was calm, and with- 
out discussion we held on half the night to get it be- 
hind us ; in a day, then, we were on the sea. Now 
came rowing. How Q. hated it ! and longed for water 
where his great paddle would serve. Voisey was 
away, codfishing at House Harbor, and we pulled 
along. Un'sekat Island showed no signs of life and 
we held on by; seemingly all was adverse. But on 
turning south from the Little Rattle who should meet 
us but Johnny Edmunds, in Voisey's long boat. We 
took possession, like buccaneers, turned him about, 
put the canoes aboard, and kept on for Fanny's. It 
was a forlorn hope, as steamer dates were, but there 
is always a chance as voyages go with the mailboat. 
But our keelless boat refused to beat, the broadside 
canoes took the wind and kept her falling off too much. 
So we turned in for House Harbor, ten miles east, a 
lucky stroke as it came out. It was dark when we got 
there, where we found John V. and his family in the 
little house which gives the place its name. Before we 
were up next morning there was a shout and we got out 
in time to see, with sinking feelings, the steamer go- 
ing on up the run for Nain. Things looked doubtful ; 
it was a dark, northeast day, thick, and the boat might 
come back far outside or run by us in the varying fog. 
We borrowed a flag from a schooner, put it up, and 
as afternoon came on watched the north for smoke. 
As luck would have it, she came back only two miles out 



186 Labrador 

and we saw her black cloud carried ahead by the wind 
some way before she was opposite. Our luggage was 
already aboard the trap boat. Leaving the canoes to 
Voisey, we put out, and the long trap's wonderful heels 
in a reach took us over in time. It was a narrow 
squeak then, for Captain Parsons, whom I could see 
clearly on the bridge, thought we were only fishermen 
to ask how were the fish " down along." The mate 
had seen our flag, but had not reported it. We saw 
that the steamer was going by without stopping. In 
great tension I jumped upon a thwart, bright in yellow 
oilskins, and motioned savagely to the bridge of the 
steamer to shut down steam. It was no fisherman's 
gesture, and something came to Parsons ; I saw him 
reach out and pull the lever. We were pretty near 
and broad off. They swung around into the wind in 
a long circle and we pulled over to them. Getting 
aboard in the uneasy water took quick work. About 
the first person I ran into was the Hon. Elihu Root, 
Secretary of State. Some one had asked him below if 
he was going up to see Mr. Cabot get on, to which he 
returned with casual interest, " Which is it, John or 
Sebastian?" He and his two sons, with Colonel 
Sanger, were making the trip of the coast. 

We were pretty well reduced by our trip, not hav- 
ing taken time enough anywhere to freshen up, and 
the extra heavy loads and wet country, with indifferent 
nights, had taken our spring well away; aboard the 
steamer it was agreed we looked like picked chickens. 

We had a good time to St. John's, gaining our pound 
a day on the boat, in accordance with custom, and were 
in good trim by the time we were there. 




o 



CHAPTER VIII 
1906 

The season of 1906 was one of a good deal of knock- 
ing about for me both on the coast and inland. I 
went north alone, for a reason. It was partly that 
only an Indian would have served the purposes I had 
in mind, and, as usual, I was not sufficiently sure be- 
forehand of being able to go at all to warrant engaging 
one ahead from one of the Gulf reserves. For the 
rest, a white companion, however pleasant and helpful 
it might be to have one, would be in some respects a 
disadvantage. I wanted to see something of the in- 
timate life of the Indians, and it is hard to find white 
men who care for that sort of thing. Mainly, how- 
ever, I had come to know that one can never really 
" sit in " with primitive people when white companions 
are along. Alone, one is easily taken into the group, 
there is always room for one new person, and the cur- 
rent of the life moves on. A white party on the 
other hand, imposes its own atmosphere, and the visit 
comes to little more than a formal meeting between 
people of alien races. 

Therefore, taking chances though it was, for a per- 
son alone is easily balked, I went north alone. There 
was not much to lose on the geographical side ; during 
the three years preceding, the country along the height 
of land and the George had been pretty well developed 
and offered little that would be new, and the adjacent 

187 



188 Labrador 

districts would be not much different, certainly no bet- 
ter. The people now offered more than the country. 

Some help would be necessary in any case, but I 
thought things would work out. My main reliance 
was the Indians themselves ; one year and another they 
had urged me to come and go in with them. There 
was only the chance of their coming out too late in the 
season, and I thought I could count on my friends of 
the shore for at least enough help for a good start 
inland, when I could work along the familiar route 
alone. Sooner or later Indians would come along. 

Naturally enough the working out of my plans 
proved rather a head-wind matter, just as when I was 
north alone in 1903, though the present venture came 
out well enough in the end. I had out of it no new 
exploration, a good deal of knocking about among old 
landmarks, some disappointments, some not very com- 
monplace experiences; all in all it ended pretty well. 

The voyage north was the usual thing that year. 
The usual shining bergs were grounded along the 
coast, the usual greater ones working along outside 
and in ad libitum. Fog, as usual, came and went. 
Schooners had increased in numbers; they were along 
everywhere in bunches and single. The ice-pack at 
Cape Harrigan was only a remnant, and we made 
through it to Fanny's Harbor at about the usual first- 
steamer date without having to stop. It was the 21st 
of July. 

On board from Battle Harbor north were Dr. Town- 
send and Glover Allen, of Boston, studying the birds 
of the coast. During their run of the coast was gath- 
ered the material for Dr. Townsend's " Along the 
Labrador Coast." They named many of the sea birds 



1906 189 

I had known but not identified, the imposing glaucous 
gull, or burgomaster, among others. A grampus 
which leaped repeatedly off Fanny's they named the 
pike-headed whale. It cleared the water finely, as 
lightly as a minnow. 

I wanted to get to Davis Inlet to get news of the 
Indians and to shape my course, and Captain Parsons, 
as of old, had offered to put me ashore at Newfound- 
land Harbor, some six miles across land from the Hud- 
son's Bay Company post; but on going ashore at 
Fanny's to see the old place and people, I found that 
Guy, the Hudson's Bay Company agent, was there 
for mail with his sailboat, and I fell quickly upon the 
opportunity to go over with him. 

There must be something about the gray old Cape 
island, out to the sea, or perhaps the suggestive 
proximity of the Devil's Thumb out still farther, which 
upsets people's balance at Fanny's Harbor, and stimu- 
lates their imagination to the fathering of sea tales. 
Here was born Spracklin's story of my canoe voyage 
from Davis Inlet in the wild night storm, and now 
came another, based on my leaving the ship with a 
canoe. Not even that I was in the canoe, for I only 
pulled it along behind the ship's boat by a string and 
laid it up on the rocks. But imagination found some- 
thing to lay hold of, for when I reached my own club 
in the fall I found that I had been seen leaving the 
steamer alone in a canoe forty miles from land! 

Fish were again scarce with the Spracklins. Some 
of the old crew were there, Tom Poole among the 
rest, and the place was still Fanny's Harbor, but Ellen 
had fallen in matrimony, and the light of the place 
was dimmed accordingly. 



190 Labrador 

Guy and I had a meal, gossiped at some length 
with the Spracklins, and were off for the post in a fail- 
ing wind. Before it died, however, we were well past 
the heights of the cape, inside the Thumb, and on be- 
hind the sheltering islands. At ten or eleven we were 
calmed at the foot of Davis Inlet run, with a tide 
coming out. There was a current notion of tying up 
and sleeping in the boat, among the mosquitoes, but I 
urged another form of punishment, which culminated 
in a back-breaking pull over the bar and to the post 
by midnight. 

In this year, 1906, I at least had a good outfit. 
Whatever I tried to do that failed to turn out was 
not from shortcomings of this or that in my equip- 
ment. The canoe was laid out particularly for the 
ponds and windy portages of the barrens. It was 
fifteen feet long by about thirty-three inches wide and 
fifteen deep, and moderately flat. The ends, not to 
catch too much wind, were rather low. If these had 
been a little more run out she would have been faster 
and better about getting ahead in a short sea, but for 
this she took less side wind when being carried, a mat- 
ter worth considering. A light person carrying a 
canoe has about as hard a time with wind as he would 
on. the water, no matter how strong he is. This canoe 
was built by Robertson, at Riverside, and was the one 
which, in 19 10, weighing only fifty-six pounds herself, 
carried about nine hundred pounds through the twenty 
lakes from George river to the Assiwaban, and this 
in her third season of service. 

The gun was a double one, six pounds, twenty bore 
left and 38.55 right, giving sixteen hundred feet veloc- 
ity. It was most convenient for picking up a living, 




ASSIWABAN RIVER, FROM WEST OF HIGH PORTAGE 




A MOSQUITO DAY. DR. HOWE IN 1910 



1906 191 

besides taking apart easily and going readily into a 
pack bag out of the way and out of the rain. More- 
over, it is worth something to be able to see through 
a gun from the breech, which one cannot do with many 
repeaters. What is more, a double gun is almost 
sure to be in order, one side of it or the other, being 
in this as good as two guns, while repeaters generally 
balk sooner or later. 

For the first time I had a round tent, of " balloon 
silk," weighing four pounds or so; a good shape to 
stand wind, and requiring only one pole. 

A four by five inch folding camera, with a beau- 
tiful split Zeiss lens, was partly spoilt by an over- 
strong shutter, expensive at that, which took to going 
off hard and putting the light camera into convulsions 
when it did, though in ordinary snaps the lens was able 
to show something of its quality. I had a luxurious 
white Hudson's Bay Company blanket, a bit heavy, 
but taking little care. The best thing of all was an 
F. S. H. matchbox, of which more anon. Fire, when 
really needed, is all the world to one. Altogether the 
outfit was about as good as ever was, and not much to 
be bettered unless by bow-facing oars for salt-water 
work. 

As already told, my objective was Indians. I had 
come back from the North the year before a good deal 
lighted with the pleasant association Quackenbush and 
I had had with the little party of them who had taken 
us over the height of land to Mistinipi and asked us 
to visit them. They were a people in the primitive 
hunter stage. Nowhere else, perhaps, was the like of 
these Indians to be found, a little group of a race 



192 Labrador 

high in personahty, yet Hving substantially in the pre- 
Columbian age of the continent. If they had guns 
and kettles and knives, if they sold fur and bought new 
conveniences, these changed little the essential life. 
They knew no language but their own; they had 
plural wives; they lived wholly on meat and fish; 
they used no salt. The clothing and lodges were 
mainly of skins. They lived under their own law, 
in their old faith unchanged. 

They would be late coming out, it appeared, and 
after some casting about I turned to a part Indian 
known as Old Edward and his family of grown sons 
to get me inland. Whether, coming on the coast alone 
after what experience I had had, I deserved to find 
help at all may be doubted. Something hangs over 
the shore people in the matter of going inland, and 
this I had known. Old E.'s people were another sort, 
were bred to the Indian life and promised well, but 
there is still a tale to be told, as will appear. Old E.'s 
father, a Scotch Cree, had drifted " across land," to 
this coast from Hudson's Bay, and married an Eskimo 
woman. But although E. was thus half Eskimo and 
quarter white he was brought up an Indian and had 
lived for many years about the Michikamau height of 
land where he was born. His sons were something 
more than half Indian. E. himself had his share of 
the indirectness common in light and dark race mix- 
tures, though intelligent and of some personality. He 
was sixty-four years old and pretty well done with the 
trail himself. The whole family, nearly, were at Ope- 
tik above William Edmunds's. Two or three of the 
sons were married ; the whole group must have counted 
twenty persons. 



1906 193 

Race mixture, of course, gives various results, and 
in the northeast there are few examples of the Indian- 
Eskimo strain. The only other one I have heard of 
was at Chimo, and the result of the combination was 
not for the best. The man in that case, however, was 
weak in constitution. But if the E. family are to be 
taken as a type it is to be hoped that either the two 
races will continue on two sides of the fence, as at 
present, or go away somewhere until the new combina- 
tion has had a few generations in which to get its 
bearings. As E. remarked, dubiously, when the mat- 
ter of a trip came up. " They are pretty high strung 
for you." They were, as was shown by a handsome 
black eye E. had when I came along later. It appeared 
that one of the boys had been holding forth upon a 
plan of his for looting Davis Inlet post. The father 
remonstrated and said he ought not to talk that way, 
whereupon the young dutiful pitched in and left his 
mark. From the St. Lawrence to Chimo there is 
trouble wherever the older boys turn up, but this I 
did not know until too late. 

It seemed that William Edmunds's was the place 
to go to, and George Lane and I worked our way up 
there in his boat, sailing, rowing, and sculling as shore 
trips generally go, and worrying for some time with 
wind tails from all ways in the usual place near Jim 
Lane's. We found Jim dismantling his house to move 
to Lane's Bay and take up his father's place there, 
where I found him later in the summer. The place 
had fallen to him as the oldest son. His father and 
mother, with a boy, had perished in a storm in the 
early spring. The snow leveled them over at the 
time, and it was only just as I same upon the coast 



194 Labrador 

that they were found; indeed it was George and I 
who carried this serious news to Jim. 

At WilHam's I was tied up two or three days by 
various kinds of weather, and my diary shows the 
drift of things: 

" Lane went off this morning. Raining in showers, 
and delayed going up to Edward's, he is five miles 
above. A poor night, on the floor — mosquitoes, cats, 
dogs, the baby, and drip from rain over the floor, in 
conspiracy. Fishing not good, and W. thinks he 
might like to go inland with me ; should prefer one of 
the E.'s if possible to get one. William reports that 
the older Naskapi are going to Chimo, on Ungava 
Bay, that they go there to trade because they do not 
like the way of the post here. The E.'s get along well 
here, but do not like my old friend Cotter, now at 
Chimo ; he knocked old E. down once for some cause, 
and Indians do not forget such things. It seems the 
Naskapi have thought I might be going to set up a 
trading post inland, and it rather appears I should 
have their trade. Some of the younger men are com- 
ing out here, but probably not before August 12th or 
so, so as to give the Pelican time to get in. This is 
too much time to lose, it is only July 24th now, I can- 
not see how to lay out my time. 

" Clear to-night with northwest wind. The sea 
trout are holding out, also the fresh water trout that 
now and then come with them; these are known as 
' hard head ' trout here. Whitefish are coming in too, 
of about two pounds; are found in all the neighboring 
lakes. They are not quite up to the southern-slope 
ones, but sometimes they get large ones, the ' master 
fish,' which are better. 



1906 195 

" W. says there is usually five or six feet of snow 
in the woods here in winter. He regards fall caribou 
skins as the best for snowshoes. A pair he had tight- 
ened when wet until they destroyed the bows. 

"July 25. Northwest gale. Not worth while to 
fight my way around the point to E.'s. No salmon. 
By nine W. came in with fifteen or twenty trout of 
three pounds. While the fish are being cleaned the 
dogs sit in a row at a little distance, lined up like 
sprinters ready for the word, until all the fish are done 
and W. speaks, when they rush in and gulp the heads 
and other leavings. 

" To-day I was alarmed for the two year old boy, 
who was actively kicking an old dog as he lay in the 
sun. The dog stood it awhile, then carefully put out 
a big paw and pushed the boy gently away without 
upsetting him. The dogs do not touch the low-hung 
whitefish drying outside the house, Mrs. E. said; the 
young ones may, but not the others, even if the family 
are away all day. 

" W. says there are a good many wolves about in 
winter; what they get are mostly shot, some trapped. 
They are never dangerous, are ' slinkers.' Near Nain 
a few years ago they were passing for three days in 
swarms, ' like the deer.' They are larger in every 
way than his dogs, say a hundred pounds or more. 
He has seen one especially large track; his own foot 
just filled it. There are no fisher about that he knows 
of. 

"A great bear track (barren ground bear?) had 
been see within a year between here and Nain, and 
more than once. Was ugly, knocked a tent down. 
I asked W. to save the skin complete if such a bear 



196 Labrador 

was killed. This bear story is to be taken with cau- 
tion; any large bear track would be stimulating to 
the Eskimo imagination. W. shot at a seal just now 
— a very high miss. 

" 26th. W. and I started for E.'s on the tide, at 
8.30. Stiff northwest wind. W., who started off a 
novice and sitting obstinately high, though the water 
was rough, was glad to get down on his knees after 
a little, as low as he could." 

Old E. had his camp on the north side of the river 
(the Notaquanon), with three sons and their families 
not far away. He had heard of me, we settled down 
comfortably, and he held forth: He thought one or 
two of the boys would like to go with me — but they 
ought to have good pay. I was a wealthy man, and 
it would not matter to me how much I paid. I ought 
to pay whatever they asked. Was I really going into 
fur trading ? The Naskapi had almost convinced them- 
selves that I was looking up a place for a trading post. 
It would be better for me to set up on his river, the 
Notaquanon ("Place where you hunt porcupines"), 
rather than on theirs. Was I quite sure that I was 
not connected with the French company? I must be. 
How could a wealthy person like me, who could stay 
at home and live as he liked, come up into the flies 
and hard country unless he had something to make 
by it ? No matter what I said as to this, the old man's 
incredulous smile never quite disappeared. In truth, 
with the passing of his best years he felt the burden 
of his irresponsible family very seriously; it was no 
wonder that he could not take my vacation point of 
view. The Naskapi, he could tell me, were hardly the 
best sort of people. They were friends to your face, 




MISTINIPI 




THE WHITE MOSS HILLS, NEAR MISTINIPI 



1906 197 

but not behind your back. They wanted the southern 
Indians to come and hunt with them, but they (E. 
considering himself one of them) did not care to. He 
needed a good canoe very much (after looking at 
mine) . The company had not treated him well. They 
ought to bring a priest to the coast ; it was a very bad 
thing that they would not. 

Talk of the coast and people followed, and it ap- 
peared that few of the people were just as they should 
be. As to the southern Indians, who hunted beyond 
the river toward the George, they were an ungrateful 
lot. He, E., had killed a great deal of meat and 
given it to them without asking anything, but they 
had no appreciation. 

Yet the old fellow was pleasant to talk with. How 
he had kept his English so perfectly good is hard to 
see, for none of his family use it in a way worth 
mentioning. He had waded across the river and shot 
a fine black bear that day; we had a good meal of it. 
They had killed five among them lately, boys and 
all. Only the day before two of the smaller boys had 
come upon a polar bear swimming in the river, but did 
not dare to shoot at it. Indians in general are afraid 
of these bears. On the other hand, Eskimo, who are 
fearless with the white bear on almost any terms, are 
quite timid about the inoffensive black bear; to 
Eskimo eyes the shadow of the inland is upon all its 
creatures. 

Trout and salmon nets were set in an eddy below 
the camp. A fine fifteen-pound fish came in while 
we were there and some large trout, up to seven 
pounds. They were living well, indeed, though with- 
out caribou. E. thought these were as numerous as 



198 Labrador 

ever inland, although they had not appeared for two 
years on his hunting grounds. 

Talk went on starvation. E. had eaten wolverene 
and wolf, but would starve rather than eat mice. 
Hunger was hard to bear at first, then you got used 
to it. Eight days was the longest time he had starved ; 
he had one partridge during the time. One could not 
stand it as well the second time. He and his daughter 
Agnes had come very low at some time lately; had 
fallen many times in getting to their cache. 

He had been in the Hudson's Bay Company service 
before the posts were abandoned on the height of 
land, for eleven years voyaging the Hamilton River. 
The trip to Michikamau took thirty-five days. He 
saw Cary and Cole after their walk from the Grand 
Falls after their canoe was burned, and had great 
respect for their feat of getting out whole. 

His route inland follows the Notaquanon River 
about eighty miles, I should say, though he mentions it 
as a hundred and fifty ; then a string of lakes takes them 
beyond the height of land. 

William and I went back to his place toward evening, 
taking a boy, Matthew E., along to help me back next 
day. " Young Edward," a son of old E., also turned 
up at W.'s, and I talked with him about the routes. He 
preferred the Assiwaban route, as being easier, and 
said the boy would go too. This put me in a good 
way, and I finally arranged the pay matter on a fair 
basis. 

" 27th. At E.'s camp. All is arranged and I think 
we will get off in the morning. It is good primitive 
life here. It is good to be away from the dog-ridden 
shore. At the house last night it was close and hot. 



1906 199 

yet I had to cover up from the mosquitoes. Dogs 
howled, something smelt, and the cat took its night 
run-around. From a long jump it landed all four 
feet on my stomach. 

" To-day the women here at Edward's sewed a 
cunningly arranged Indian flap to the door of my 
round tent, set it up nicely, put in a bed of fresh 
boughs, and started a little fire of fragrant curlew- 
berry vines outside that sent a curl of smoke over to 
the flap, into the door, and around inside until the flies 
were all out. Their woman's touch is magic in these 
things, no less as to the things they cook." 

By morning the family courage had fallen off. 
They feared to let the boys go ; there was much talk 
and many excuses. Matthew had no moccasins, the 
pay was not enough. The trip came near being called 
off. We started at last. Matthew's mother looked 
very doubtful, and young E.'s wife held back from 
shaking hands with me at parting, but after this ex- 
pression of feeling relented finally. " Don't starve 
them," said old E. 

It was the 29th. Some of the younger boys helped 
us over a neck to the familiar old portage route where 
George and I went back and forth with so many loads 
in 1903. This time we knocked along easily. The 
boys preferred not to have me work, but I held to a 
fair pack. .Rather soon young E. asked me if I had 
any whiskey. In the last pond, Muku-wakau-mestuk 
(" Only crooked tree"), there were a few sheldrakes. 
We camped at a little brook, the second camping place 
of George and myself. The path was not hard to 
trace now, for since 1903 few caribou had come 
through the valley to confuse the trail. There were 



200 Labrador 

scattering tracks, and one small bear track, but little 
visible life. Three Canada jays chortled about a pond 
and some ptarmigan were laughing along the brook 
at dark. The main stream we came up is called by 
the Indians Barren ground river, as is the great George 
river beyond the height of land. At night came more 
mosquitoes, going far toward eating up the boys, who 
had only one piece of netting between them and could 
not keep it snug. They were sleepless and uneasy. I 
was better of¥, having a whole piece of netting to my- 
self, but the closed tent was airless. I had put on some 
tar grease in the afternoon, but thought that even 
without it the enemy really liked the others best, though 
I was marked well under my shirt by black flies dur- 
ing the day. After midnight, alarmed lest their tribu- 
lations drive my crew into the idea of giving up the 
trip, I spent two hours sewing a netting front into the 
door of the tent, and with more air and no flies the 
night jfinished out well. 

The 30th was hot and thundery, with showers. I 
had a lesson about putting out fires, being the last to 
leave the luncheon place. Looking back from some 
way on, the haze down the valley seemed smoky, and 
the boys asked me if I had surely put out the fire, 
" put water on it." I had not, and as it was on naked 
ground and virtually out would have taken what 
chances there were, myself. Not so the Indians. 
Young E. ran back, quite a way, to make sure. Luck- 
ily he found the fire out. 

Before long we departed from my old route and 
turned west two or three miles across a lake I had 
visited in 1903, but not traversed. A long portage to 
Side brook, a short run upstream, and a portage across 



1906 201 

a lightly timbered plain brought us out on the Assi- 
waban some three or four miles above the falls. Lux- 
urious travel this, and fast, for I went only once over 
the portages myself, and the boys were quick in bring- 
ing up the second load. 

I had left my rod at William's, so made up a good- 
sized salmon fly to a short line and a dry stick, and 
in the twilight slapped — literally — the water for fish. 
In a short time I had ten, of about one and a half 
pounds. The big hook let nothing go. , This night we 
slept. As on the night before, the aurora was fine, 
particularly in its showy latitudinal bands. 

We made great time up river, shoving over the 
swift shallows with three paddles and using a towing 
line at only one place. It is notable that the Indians 
do not use the regular setting pole on this river ; possi- 
bly there is little poling done in this region anywhere. 

A bear which swam the river in the afternoon, after 
the muskrat fashion of his kind, cost us a little wasted 
time looking for him in the bushes and we stopped on 
the wind lake near the outlet. We really ought to 
have kept on through the lake instead of camping, it 
was glassy calm ; but the dark water and sky ahead 
looked so strangely shadowed and portentous, as if 
any sort of a downpour and wind convulsion might 
break, that I respected the misgivings of the others, 
not to mention my own. But ominous as the outlook 
was nothing unusual occurred after all. Whether or 
not we had broken the weather rule — if so our sin 
was slight as things looked — a northwester kept us 
hopelessly windbound the next day. We climbed a 
high rock hill alongside the camp, a landmark from 
far down the river. My two young impudents made 



202 Labrador 

the occasion a race, beating me handily, both of them. 
Coming down they tried the same game, but this was 
not so bad. Young E. and I reached camp together, 
with Matthew well behind. Later we fell to making 
maps on the sand, a hundred feet long, and discussed 
the country beyond. 

By morning the wind eased and things were better. 
I stirred the camp out at three, and we reached the 
upper part of the lake on calm water. Turning across 
from the high southern cliffs to the north side the 
wind came down again from the great gap, the sea 
rose fast. We were all anxious before we got over. 
The distance across the lake looks short, but is de- 
ceptive. We paddled like devils, but the high north 
wall moved away as we went. Toward the last some 
water came in, not much, but in that worst of wind- 
funnels anything might happen ; we were thankful 
to get over. Then came a hard, wet dance getting 
up the shore, just such as Q. and I had had the year 
before, and as then we hung close to the rocks, slopping 
about in their backwash for miles. Young E. was un- 
happy ; he had been moody ever since we reached the 
lake. The place is bad enough anyway, and to a per- 
son brought up in fear of rock demons and the under- 
water people, it is easily no place to be in in a wind. At 
the time I did not know much about these ruling pow- 
ers of the place, and considered E. merely water timid, 
which with all allowance he doubtless was. It is fair 
to say that he somewhat distrusted the very light and 
well-burdened canoe. 

Once out of the lake we made the five miles to 
the forks and camped in the old spot, where the kettle 
stick of Q. and myself was still in place over the 



1906 203 

ashes we had left. On the way we watched a bear, 
high up on the side of the valley ; we could have gone 
up and shot him, almost surely, but the bushes were 
too wet to be pleasant, and as he soon disappeared over 
the high level, a long climb, we did not follow. 

Showers followed until night; the men left my 
sleeping things out, and with w'et trousers and a wet 
blanket I slept cold, as did E. too. The hardbread 
gave out, an inconvenient matter here, and we had to 
take up flour; it developed that E. did not know how 
to cook it. 

An episode of the next day, August 2, changed the 
face of my affairs suddenly, to the extent of putting 
back my visit to the high barrens for a month. As 
we put out from the eddy into the stream a vicious 
gust rocked the canoe, and E. urged that it was too 
windy to go. Such a thing as being windbound on 
a small running river was a new idea to me, and I held 
him to it awhile accordingly. He had been timid about 
wind throughout; I had reflected often upon the com- 
parative dash of the Naskapi. We worked along 
slowly a half mile, keeping close to the bank out of 
the current, when E. complained that it was too hard, 
and we landed for a time, watching the wind and 
making sand maps. After an hour of this E. pro- 
posed that we abandon the river and take the Indian 
land trail from the forks; he said he could neither 
paddle nor pole, he was used up. I consented, and 
we dropped back. From the forks the two started 
ahead with packs while I waited to come in on the 
second turn, and while they were gone I thought things 
over. The new plan seemed doubtful. We could be 
windbound on the barrens as well as on the water. 



204 Labrador 

With the double portaging necessary it would take 
forty or fifty miles of walking to get even as far as 
the high portage, and much more time than by water. 
When the two came back I spoke of the matter, and 
E., who now protested that he was " akushu," sick, 
said that he did not intend to go to George River 
anyway. We were now taking the chance of missing 
the Naskapi on the river, for they come out that way, 
besides, if not so important, of seeing no new country. 
I said that if he was not going to Tshinutivish I pre- 
ferred to keep the river, and we would better bring 
the packs back. I offered to pole up the river slowly, 
and let him walk the bank; and he not being well I 
would go up the hill and bring back his pack myself. 
Not much was said, and I started off for the packs 
with the boy, leaving young E. to get luncheon. I re- 
turned slowly, to give time for the cooking, letting the 
boy reach camp some time ahead. When I got back 
nothing had been done toward luncheon, and E. was 
evidently in a rage. He announced that he was go- 
ing home at once. Talk followed; but the amount 
of it was, on his part, that he demanded to be taken 
home in the canoe. He would have gone to Tshinu- 
tivish by the hill, he said, if I had kept to that route ; 
he was not sick except for paddling and poling. Now 
he was going home afoot anyway. I offered to go 
over the hill if he must, but he wouldn't now. I urged 
him to stay until morning, then we would talk it over 
and do the best thing. I insisted that they take pro- 
visions, pointing out that I couldn't possibly use what 
I had. I offered to take them across the river in the 
canoe — we were between the forks — if they must 
go. Everything I urged only made him worse. HI 




NAHPAYO, PAKUUNNOH, AH-PE-WAT, 1906 




FROM THE HIGH PORTAGE 



1906 205 

had asked him not to knock his head against a rock 
it seemed as if he would have gone and done it at once. 
At the shore I learned, later, that he was known by 
these blind rages, which would last some hours. After 
they were over he would be ashamed and apologetic. 

We were at it with signs, questions, bad Indian 
speech and English on my part — signs, strong talk, 
and hopping about and good Indian on his. Any 
white man as mad as he would have done something; 
any traveler in the presence of such a manifestation 
as E.'s would have kept his feet under him and stayed 
between the Indian and the gun as I did. E. would 
have been nothing to deal with at arm's length, but 
strong, quick little Matthew would have made him- 
self felt somehow. 

At last, while I was looking into my dictionary 
for words to go on with they started away, and when 
I looked up again to speak they were some way off 
disappearing among the trees. They had five or six 
rations of eatables which I had pressed upon them, 
that amount being at hand in a bag we had intended 
to leave at the forks as a cache. 

Things had gone pretty fast, and I sat for an hour 
on the river bank, elbows on knees and chin in hands. 
It was not too obvious what to do. The Indians 
should come along in five or six days, perhaps sooner ; 
they passed the forks at just this time the year be- 
fore. There was not much point in going on alone; 
it would be hard and slow, and even if I met the In- 
dians would involve ten or twelve days of solitude, 
while their companionability after seeing the E.'s at 
the shore would be unsafe to depend on. Old E. had 
shown disapproval when I spoke of wanting to see the 



206 Labrador 

Naskapi, losing no chance to depreciate them, and 
lately I had had an impression that the young men too 
did not want me to meet them. They were safe to 
make all the trouble they could. Finally I decided to 
go back to the post, get my mail, and if circumstances 
allowed, to come back inland with the Indians. In an 
hour or two I had a rowing frame and oars roughed 
out against need in getting through the lakes if they 
were windy, got the tent up handily, the stakes being al- 
ready in, and turned in later as the moon rose. The 
canoe I put close outside the tent, though there was 
little chance of the deserters trying to take it. Once 
in a while through the night I looked out, but the boat 
was always there in the moonlight. 

My idea of the situation was that E. was homesick, 
timid, and out of tune with the enterprise when we ar- 
rived at the forks. Yet he might not have let himself 
get out of hand as he did if a new circumstance had 
not been added. This was the discovery that caribou 
were moving in the country beyond. They had noted, 
what missed me, that there were deer hairs washed up 
along the banks of the river, shed while the animals 
were crossing the stream above. At midsummer the 
winter hair is falling ojff, and sometimes washes up 
in quantity along the shores, as Mrs. Hubbard found 
it the year before on the upper George while the great 
migration was passing. Besides, there were deer 
tracks on the hill where Matthew and I had gone for 
the packs. The boy went cautiously on from the 
packs to the crest of the ridge and looked long over 
the barrens, saying " Ah'tif," ^ " Scattering deer 
about." Now the southern Indians had had no deer 
1 Ah-teef . 



1906 207 

for two years, and were shortened for meat as well 
as skins for clothes, lodges, and snowshoes. The men 
must get back, make canoes and get their outfits, and 
go with their families to their hunting grounds. 

The boy had reached camp first and reported, while 
I rested along by the way, not caring to get in before 
luncheon was ready, and by the time I came in E. was 
worked up to his uncontrollable stage. If we had been 
able to talk freely together things would have come 
out better. As it was, but for E.'s peculiarity of tem- 
per the breakup would hardly have occurred. Still, I 
doubt his going far in any case. My notion of keep- 
ing to the river on account of meeting the northern 
Indians was justified, for they came down the very 
next day, close behind me. 

At three in the morning I turned out, and in an hour 
was off. Then followed one of those days when the 
homing instinct is free and opportunity serves. I am 
not sure that I made a wise expenditure of strength 
that day, for there was no real need of pushing, but 
save for a few moments the canoe moved steadily until 
six o'clock — fourteen hours. In front of me on a 
pack was a cup, some dry pea-m.eal ration, a pipe, to- 
bacco, and matches. The morning was calm and fine. 
On a point in the wind lake I landed long enough to 
take aboard a stick or two for rigging a sail, but kept 
on by paddle, swinging away as the hours went and 
losing few strokes through the day. At the foot of the 
Natua-ashish I pitched the unused oars and frame 
sticks into the bushes, where we found them in 1910. 
Save at that place I did not stop. It cost only the time 
of a stroke to light a match, or take a swallow of water 
or a mouthful to eat, and so the day went. Wind 



208 Labrador 

came strong ahead the last miles to the falls, and I had 
to use strength, but kept moving. At six, by the 
sun, I was at the portage. I had not hurried, but 
fourteen hours of continuous paddling is a long shift. 
It had been good weather for traveling, and I had in 
mind the feebleness of a single paddle when weather 
goes wrong. But by keeping the rule of using good 
weather as it passes I had missed the Indians, and per- 
haps a moral lies here. 

I boiled the kettle above the falls and meant to 
camp, but after supper the call of the trail was not 
spent and I took a pack over the portage, then another, 
then the canoe. When I picked up the fourth load it 
was getting dark and beginning to rain. By the time 
I had dropped down river two or three miles almost 
utter darkness set in and a breeze came from ahead 
with real rain. Then, remarking to the place gener- 
all, for we all talk a little when alone on the trail, 
" This is not traveling weather " — I turned over the 
canoe on a tolerable mossy shelf, boiled a final kettle, 
and slept as I could. It was toward midnight. I 
had tucked away some fifty miles, including the por- 
taging. 

At five I was off again, keen to be over the wider 
waters before wind should rise, and I was none too 
soon. Following the rain a strong northwester was 
pushing down, and I drove straight north across the 
bay to meet it, so as to have the weather gage on a long 
point east. By the time the water whitened up I had 
offing enough, came about, and danced down for Vois- 
ey's with hands full to keep from broaching to as the 
balky canoe yawed to right and left. There is a curi- 
ous flat rock or shoal somewhere toward Voisey's, un- 



1906 209 

der water. The tide was coming up and the wind go- 
ing down, in such balance that once over the shoal I 
could not go forward or back, and felt curiously help- 
less. I was afraid of being pitched out, but managed 
to work off sideways and get to going again. The 
place amounts to a trap. 

Sitting near the end of a light canoe there is always 
some chance of being jumped overboard in broken 
water, and besides, even when one is rowing, there is 
the possibility of being caught broadside by a gust as 
the canoe shoots out upon the wave and blown actually 
out of water. About high shores, when squalls are 
strong, this might well happen. A compliment to a 
good steersman in the north is, " He can't be thrown 
out," but this relates chiefly to running rapids. 

The last run, through the backwash of the steep 
point outside Voisey's house, was as much of a jump- 
ing matter as I remember, but the canoe blew on 
through to shallow water behind the point and I hopped 
overboard without harm from the boulders. It was 
no joke to get the canoe from the water to the lee of 
a large boulder near, in the strong wind. I tried 
many times before succeeding. 

Voisey was just ready to start off somewhere with 
his family, but was willing to help me. This was a 
narrow escape from having to work my own way down 
the coast without oars. If I had been twenty minutes 
later in getting out of camp in the morning I should 
have been windbound, and he would have been gone. 
He was only waiting for the wind to let down. The 
moral as to using one's weather was very easy to draw 
that year ; we rarely had more than one day of calm at 
a time, and bad weather held on longer than good. 



210 Labrador 

The wind blew down rather quickly, and Voisey 
handed me over to the Un'sekat people that night. 
There were several strange Eskimo there with the 
Noahs. The little house had been enlarged on one 
side, but there were eleven of us, with a going cook 
stove. It was very warm weather, and the place was 
well battened against flies. I was politely given a place 
next the wall and room to stretch out in, the others 
lying more or less across one another. Of close places 
I have known it was one of the least to be recom- 
mended. We had about ninety cubic feet of air apiece. 
Some one remarked in the morning that it had been 
" warm " in there. 

Antone and a young friend named Poy took me 
down to the post. Poy, otherwise Boaz, was the best 
hunter in Nain, and withal rather shy and hard to 
photograph. I was to meet him once again that year 
after a more serious experience. 

Wind failed and we opened Daniel's winter house for 
the night, where mosquitoes were as thick inside as out. 
At seven on the 6th we were at the post, and I told 
my tale. Guy said the E. boys were a lot of crooks 
anyway. 

Rather early on the 7th in came old and young E. 
and their families and six Naskapi. Three of the 
latter were old acquaintances, Ostinitsu, Nahpayo, and 
Pakuunnoh, and the other three I knew also from 1903. 
The younger men were extremely friendly, asking, 
" Now will you go with us ? " I could not be sure un- 
til I had seen my mail. 

Old Ostinitsu looked more thoughtful. E. would 
naturally have told him our tale. The latter tried to 
put on severity and insisted that I had compelled the 




ABRAM AND GEORGE LANE 




SAM BROMFIELD WITH SALMON, 1906 



1906 211 

boys to leave me. Their story was that I had threat- 
ened them and driven them from camp without food, 
Matthew being nearly barefoot; if they had not been 
able to go to one of their winter places they might 
have starved; I did not know how to travel, and in- 
sisted on going the wrong way. Of course young E. 
insisted this was the truth, but in time things eased off. 
There was not much for me to do unless with my 
knuckles. The first time I had to pass some of the 
really nice E. women, who had done me so well at 
their camp, I hated to do it, expecting them to look 
scissors at least. To my surprise, and I must say 
relief, they had a demure look of something near ap- 
proval. The truth was that they had all been well 
scared for fear of consequences, and the wives doubt- 
less needed no light on their husbands' characters. 
It might have been better in the long run if I had 
taken steps against them, or at least threatened them 
into a proper state of mind. But I could not look for 
any support from the Hudson's Bay Company, rather 
the contrary, and a magistrate would be far to seek. I 
kept a fairly stiff face. 

I had rather a good time for a few days with the 
other Indians, who seemed to think that the E's had 
come out rather small. Nahpayo asked me if I came 
through the Natua-ashu alone, making signs of pad- 
dling, and all looked impressed. They themselves 
would not care to ; it is when alone that one has de- 
cidedly to fear the demons of such places. Na'pao told 
me of his father, Katshiuas, whom I knew in 1903, 
and said he was well. In the spring he had told Guy 
that he thought his father must have starved, as he had 
not heard from him for some time. 



212 Labrador 

On the wharf scales, which I think weigh Hght, 
Na'pao stood at one hundred and forty pounds. He 
had grown to be a handsome fellow the last year. All 
his party looked well, a matter of deer supply. Paku- 
unnoh weighed one hundred and fifty-two and a 
younger man one hundred and fifty-four. We all 
showed off with the fish weights, at which some of the 
younger shore people outdid the Indians and appeared 
rather well, and even I came off not so ill, for of course 
they were all unused to these putting-up trials. The 
Naskapi are not heavily muscled, though everlasting 
on the trail. After the show was over I reached up 
to the top of the weighing frame, pulled myself up 
with one arm and walked off. Looking back I saw 
Nahpayo go up slyly and try it himself. I caught 
his eye, shook my head slightly, and he looked a bit 
sheepish as he failed. 

The steamer came in on the 9th, and the Indians 
were off within a day. Toward the last the Indians' 
disposition to help me along fell off. Earlier, Nah- 
payo had told Guy that I was going up with them. 
They were disappointed that I was not going to set up a 
trading post, for I had told E., with a certain impolicy, 
that I was only out to see things, and the old man 
could not pass by an opportunity for making himself 
felt. He was interpreter for the Naskapi, there were 
some relationships among the wives, and though they 
cared little for him personally, in matters of white 
man against Indian they would take his side. More- 
over, my power of communication with them was too 
limited to be effective at such a time. Old E. was 
not so bad; we had a talk in which he said the boys 
were sorry for what they had done and would like to 



1906 213 

make it up. Ostinitsu, too, civilly told me where their 
camp was, at the narrows o£ Mistinipi. But they all 
fell away at the last, and an Indian says no disagree- 
ably. Nor was old E. then sympathetic over the re- 
sults of his genius for making trouble. His part had 
been plain to predict. As a friend of mine among the 
shore people said afterward, " About all the rows along 
here come from old E." 

It never rains but it pours. Added to other things 
I had had no mail by the steamer. " Bad news travels 
fast " was my only consolation. For a time I was at 
the post, then Guy and I went over to Lane's bay 
to visit Sam Bromfield. Meanwhile I picked up odds 
and ends from the people about. Discussing Eskimo, 
Mrs. Dicker, long intimate with the coast, said they 
were more keen than Indians to get whiskey and told 
of their shooting through a house from outside when 
drunk. This was near Rigolet. Three Eskimo there 
had some gin, got to fighting in a boat, and all were 
drowned. They were worse than Indians when drink- 
ing. She agreed that the E. boys would be a dan- 
gerous lot if they had drink; and old E. himself said 
the same. The E.'s get some effect from spruce beer. 
It is surprising how a mere trace of alcohol affects such 
people, people whose race has never had it. Mrs. D. 
hadn't much fancy for Eskimo women, but respected 
those of the Indians. The women of the E. family 
certainly seemed good people. 

Guy and I had a stiff time getting to Sam Brom- 
field's. At the point of the bay the swell and sea from 
north piled up against the outgoing tide in a heavy, 
broken " lop." The boat, though low, would have 
done well enough reefed down, but Guy was not a 



214 Labrador 

reefer. If I wanted to see the " thing that couldn't be 
done " on salt water, I should get into a boat with Guy 
and Spracklin. This time I was cold, which is not 
good for one's serenity at such times. It was a sav- 
age, cold, rainy afternoon. The storm brought in 
many gulls ; thousands of kittiwakes — " ticklers " — 
went with us for hours, often close about. Their 
white droppings were like a beginning snowstorm, hit- 
ting the boat thirty or forty times, nor did we ourselves 
wholly escape. Yagers, sharp winged and swallow 
built, the " bo'suns " of fishermen and hens of the 
French, attacked fiercely the larger gulls, which were 
glad to abandon their sea pickings. These hunter gulls, 
as graceful as fierce, were black above, with white 
breasts and a black bar across the neck. 

Sam had a very presentable family. We all talked 
endlessly the first evening, Sam in the lead. The old 
violin and the new violin, the graphophone and the 
talk went on long into the night. For the rest of the 
week I was there we were steady enough, but Sam's 
first fizz is of high pressure, the fun is good anyway, 
and there is nothing for it but to turn in and join. 

I had thought of bringing a graphophone that year, 
for a novelty, but it would have been coals to New- 
castle indeed. There were no less than seven from this 
bay to Shung-ho, just above Davis Inlet, and most of 
the talk along was of new records, chiefly vaudeville 
songs and smart dialogue. Sam had one hundred 
dollars' worth of records, yet some of these people had 
hardly enough to eat in winter. I could not blame 
them much. They were only part Eskimo, the blood 
of the gay world was in them all. Moreover, the bay 
life was not what it had formerly been. The trees 



1906 215 

had been burned, deer no longer swarmed from the 
interior, the old superabundance of sea and shore game 
had fallen away ; in summer the waters were swept by 
schooners from south. The life had been good while 
it was easy; now that it was harder the things of the 
outer world brightened to them, and it was not strange 
that the ragtime tunes gave them more of a lift than 
serious music. 

The speech here is, I suppose, Devonshire. Mrs. 
B. said, recounting a punishing trip of the family from 
the post the week before, " By the time we had he 
(Sam) there it would have been dark" (if the wind 
had failed). All use the nominative thus, and the ob- 
jective is reversed in the same way, as in the classic ex- 
ample of certain children regarding their supposed 
mother, " she don't belong to us. Her don't belong to 
we." 

With dogs about the house and too many mosquitoes 
I netted windows and stopped holes smartly, as I did 
in most houses before settling down — to little result 
save for getting the netted windows open for air. 
Thorough killings in the evening did only passing 
good. In the end I won by banking the underpinning 
with sand. They had been coming in from below. 

Sam talked of the coast northward. The Nach- 
vack Eskimo buried their more important people high 
upon a rock slope, walling them in and putting stone 
slabs across. All personal possessions were put along- 
side, kayak, utensils, clothes, and the needles and spe- 
cial things of the women. " What a pity to put a 
fine kayak there ! " said Sam. Everything is dam- 
aged beyond use before leaving. Guns are put out 
of gear, and pots have holes knocked in them. Even 



216 Labrador 

now the older men put meat on the graves, and other 
observances survive. On kilhng seal the tip of the 
heart and liver are thrown into the water. Jim Lane, 
who used to hunt at Ungava, still does it "for luck." 
Anywhere along the bays an offering in time of storm 
or for hunting luck is well regarded. The Moravians, 
after a hundred and forty years of striving, say they 
do not hope to suppress these ideas. 

During the whale hunt about Nachvack the women 
and children must remain silent and motionless while 
the men are out. On one occasion a mouse ran across 
the floor, a child ran after it, and the whale was of 
course lost. 

Sam took me to his salmon net, some eight miles 
up. After the blow he expected twenty fish, but there 
were only two, besides one of " pele " size, four 
pounds, and a large red sucker. The schooners had 
cut the fish off outside. Their cod traps have re- 
duced his catch to a tenth of what it used to be. 
Climbing " Summer-house Hill " I could see lakes run- 
ning north on the main stream, called Hunt's river, 
also " Grassy lakes," off west and south toward Hope- 
dale, with a waste of burnt country west. There had 
been quite an area of light, straight spruce about this 
bay, chiefly black spruce, but some tall white ones. 
We saw only one seal. 

Nearby is a very old Eskimo camp site, once just 
above tide on the narowing bay, but now, by the 
gradual elevation of the coast, above a high bank where 
no Eskimo would think of camping, even if the pres- 
ent shallow river offered anything to camp there for. 

The summer house was the usual small box with a 
place for fire. When Sam turned in he wrapped his 



1906 217 

neck up well. There was a weasel about, he said, and 
he had heard they would cut one's throat sometimes. 

He discussed " fair play." An Eskimo had brought 
a silver foxskin to Hopedale and was offered $60 for 
it. He could get a good deal more at Davis Inlet 
and begged hard to be allowed to sell it there. But he 
was not allowed to, under penalty of being cut off 
from all store privileges. Sam wondered if this was 
not " unchristian." 

I reminded him that the missions buy low but sell 
goods low to the people. They lost largely on an ac- 
cumulation of silvers not long ago, and have resorted 
to paying the hunter something down, about half, I 
think, then selling the skin in London for the best 
price possible and paying the balance afterward. At 
Nain, S. told, they had twenty-five silvers the last 
year. He shot one in front of his house not long ago, 
firing twenty-two shots. It brought $180, certainly 
good pay for his ammunition. He has caught thirty 
or forty at one time or another, getting four one year. 

Sam's ethics of trade are not common. One year 
he sold young E. a dog. E. was offering eight or ten 
dollars for a dog, but Sam said this one was worth 
only four dollars, and refused to take more. So with 
his son Abram, who sold Easton, traveling with 
\A^allace, in 1905, a beautiful ranger seal sleeping bag 
for six dollars. Easton offered more, but A. knew 
that a dollar a skin was the proper price and would 
take only that. 

But Sam was rather bitter about the low prices the 
Hudson's Bay Company has paid in the past, and said 
they would be doing no better now if the competition 
of the French company did not compel them to. It 



218 Labrador 

is hard for the people to see the high prices paid at 
Hamilton Inlet, where there is competition, compared 
with what they get here. All regard a new trader, 
such as the French company, as a mere deliverer. But 
new traders begin high, to get the trade, and I fancy 
the tale of overreaching would be the same in the end. 
Moreover, the traders sometimes pay too much. One 
year an incompetent fur buyer paid absurdly high 
prices — he must have lost heavily for his principals — 
and I found the next year that furs were being held 
in the bays for his promised return. Meanwhile his 
prices were taken as throwing light upon the practices 
of established dealers. Expectations for the future 
were high. The non-appearance of this trader relieved 
the situation after a time. The rapidly ascending 
prices of recent years have given a bad look to even 
perfectly fair ones of the earlier period. 

But the doubts of the people are not without a 
basis. Fair play is not too common where the sharp- 
ened organization of the world comes in contact with 
the isolated hunter. Trade makes when it can, as 
much as it can, and the helpless are exploited. At any 
rate Sam, living to his principles as with young E, 
and Easton, had a right to speak. He had indeed to 
be wideawake not to sell his foxes too low, now that 
his fishing grounds were being cut off by the cod men. 

The salmon net was absolutely empty the morning 
after we arrived, and we dropped down to Jim Lane's 
by luncheon time. Jim's trout, caught in fresh water, 
are even beter than those outside in the bay, combin- 
ing the good qualities of both the fresh and salt- 
water fish. Jim's small boy was about the age of 
mine, and with his very way. 



1906 219 

There was wolf and deer talk in the evening. Sam 
told about a deer chase he and Abram had, using a 
kometik and dogs. They " brown " them in the bunch 
with their repeating rifles while the sled is going. A 
large stag slowed up as the sled came on, as if to save 
getting out of breath, stood erect on his haunches, and 
held his two fore hoofs upright, then clapped them 
together with great force and sound. His nostrils 
opened and he blew jets of steam into the cold air 
with great fury. Holding his large split hoofs upright 
he snapped the halves together with a loud cracking. 
At the demonstration the leading dog shied off; the 
second leader jumped for the stag, and by a blow 
from one hoof was laid out motionless. The other 
hoof had followed, for the deer struck right and left, 
but the second blow missed because the dog was al- 
ready down. The team stood off after that. In this 
manner, say the hunters, the old stags kill wolves. A 
Cree hunter has told me of having a woodland caribou 
he was chasing stop in the same way in time to tread 
down the snow around him and have room in which 
to fight. 

On a time, one of Sam's tales went, wolves howled 
at him all one night near his place. In the morning 
he disabled one, whereupon the other approached him 
behind. Thinking the place was " alive with them " 
he did not shoot the second one, but shouted until it 
went away. Later, when he found that there had been 
only two, he followed and finished the first one, much 
chagrined at losing the other. 

More of an experience was that of William Flowers, 
living in the next bay. He saw fifteen or twenty 
wolves on the ice and struck off another way among 



220 Labrador 

trees to avoid them. Soon he ran into more wolves, 
who made for him instantly. The first lot heard the 
uproar and came too. There may have been thirty 
or forty altogether. He killed three and disabled a 
good many before they left. Flowers, a very steady 
person, owned to being too scared to do good shoot- 
ing. He doubted their knowing he was a man at 
first sight, taking him rather, among the trees, for a 
deer. 

Somewhere along the shore " a bunch of women " 
were in a tent while the men were hunting A child 
was outside and a wolf made for it, whereupon the 
women yelled until he went off. The men did not 
believe the story, but the women would not sleep that 
night. Before morning the wolf came, ripped the tent, 
and was shot. He was an immense old wolf, with no 
back teeth. 

A sort of Red Riding Hood tale came later from 
Spracklin. His girls, one year, complained of being 
followed about by three dogs, which they had to keep 
off by throwing stones. It was thought that they be- 
longed to old John Lane. At one time the men chased 
them under the landing stage and punished them with 
stones. When at last Lane came over from his bay 
he said they were wolves ; he trapped them that winter 
in the flat west of the harbor. 

Spracklin, who liked his milk, always brought along 
a nanny goat from home on his schooner; it picked 
up its living about the station. One day there was a 
disturbance outside and the goat was found in the ring 
with one of the large foxes of the region, the goat 
butting with spirit and the fox dancing about to get 
a nip. 



1906 221 

The weather settled warm, with fine aurora on clear 
nights. The first Sunday Abram and I walked to 
George Lane's little house, two miles east. On the 
way a shrike was having a sparring match in the air 
with two smaller birds, some two hundred feet up in 
the air. The Httle birds were as ready to attack 
as the shrike; it was hard to tell which started the 
trouble. 

Abram told me of an experience taking seven south- 
ern Indians to Hopedale with his dogs. They wanted 
him to go a way he did not want to take, an unusual 
route, and he refused to do it. One of them took hold 
of him, showed anger, and was unpleasant. Upon 
this, A. called back his fifteen powerful dogs, who 
came bounding in eager for the fray. It must have 
been a stirring sight. The Indians, who had no guns, 
accepted his views with marvelous promptness, and 
were always civil to him after that. Some of my 
friends the E.'s were in the group. 

" August 20. To net with Sam. He had twenty- 
five trout and a pele, the trout not large. Net set in 
form of a little cod trap. Fish nearly all dead, as they 
were not taken out yesterday, Sunday. Net bunged 
up with fuzzy weed; it is hard to keep them clear as 
late in the season as this. Same got a switchy stick 
and worked a long time beating the stuff off. 

" A fine raised beach east of the trout net, a hun- 
dred to a hundred and twenty-five feet above present 
sea level. Jim Lane's memory indicates two feet rise 
here in forty years. This would put the Eskimo camp 
site near summer house at least three hundred years 
back, which agrees with the age of the implements 
there." 



222 Labrador 

A cloud of lance, eel-like fish five or six inches 
long, were held in the little trout trap, keeping in a 
school, and absurdly enough not daring to go out 
through the two-inch meshes. Finally they settled to 
the bottom in despair, regardless not only of the big 
meshes, but of the opportunity offered by two four- 
foot openings. 

These fish behave very little like salmon, one of 
which had gone through the trap like a shot, leaving 
a hole almost the size of a stovepipe. A trout weigh- 
ing eleven pounds, however, stayed in. This trout was 
twenty-nine inches long and fifteen and seven eighths 
in girth. All fish grow large here. In October cod 
of sixty or seventy-five pounds are caught in shallow 
water on the bar near the house. 

Hereabouts a pine grosbeak is a " mope," a shrike 
a " jay killer " or " shreek." " The prettiest bird is 
what we call a fly-catcher, small, with yellow, white, 
and changeable blue, a little black cap on the head." 

Sam asked me one day if the water in the interior 
was all salt, as he had always heard. He told me that 
the term Great Grampus was a loose one, the proper 
name of this monster of the waters being O-mi-oo- 
ah-lik (boat wrecker). It lives in Ungava Pond, 
where the waves are always mountainous. One can- 
not see across it. 

How strange people are ! Here they were, the shore 
folk, taking the savage coast and shifting ice, the hunt- 
ing of the white bear and walrus, and the dealings 
with the great sea itself, as all in the day's work, yet 
investing the innocent white moss and lake country 
behind with most unheard of imaginings. It was a 
foregone conclusion that when I asked A. if he wanted 



1906 223 

to go inland with me after the mailboat came, his par- 
ents should decide that he could not be spared. 

The bay people like summer, and none the less for 
its shortness, but their real life is the winter life. 
The narratives are almost all of winter, of hunts and 
storms and journeys; and all revolve around the dogs. 
Only with his dogs and when out with his dogs is the 
Labrador man in his glory, whether he be white, 
mixed, or Eskimo. " Without our dogs we might as 
well be dead," has been said to me by more than one. 
With the dogs they can bring their wood, haul their 
seals, drive to the far ice edge and away before the 
pack swings free. Inland for deer they go, near to 
the height of land, out again with meat, off to the trad- 
ing posts. In summer the people are bound to the fish- 
ing, and the dogs range about the shore, or are left on 
islands when fish are to be taken to market or some 
journey for supplies made in the uncertain winds; but 
in the long winter the people and dogs are inseparable. 
Along the coast they go in the low sun and the keen 
air, whirling over the great white spaces among the 
islands, across the wooded necks and lakes, down into 
the bays and on. At the houses they dash up and 
stop, strong, cheerful Eskimo from Ramah and Nach- 
vack in the north to Hopedale and Aillik and Mok- 
kovik in the south, visiting and eating and passing on 
— mainly, if one may say, for the joy of the road. 
Forty, fifty, a hundred miles a day they go when all is 
well, on under the high winter moon and the northern 
lights to their snowhouse inn. 

Sam could not bear that I should leave the coast 
without seeing dogs in harness, and one day he drove 
them to the sled on the level ground. It did not go 



224 Labrador 

well. Eagerly they bounded off only to foul their 
traces among snags and bushes. The distress and 
yells of the uncomprehending leader were pathetic. It 
would not do, but I caught their spirit. The dogs are 
as keen as their drivers. The joy of the winter way 
to them all ! 

It is not for me, seeing these dogs only in sum- 
mer, to say where their undoubted quality of devotion 
ends and the fierceness of their wolf inheritance takes 
on. These dogs of Bromfield's, and I have seen the 
like in others, would follow along the shore as we 
rowed to the net with all the appearance of our home 
dogs that cannot bear to be left behind, and in spite 
of our threatenings. I do not think it was the scul- 
pins and rock cod they had in mind; they would get 
all they wanted, or all there were, anyway. 

Those dogs of Sam's were surely good dogs. A 
fine old white one, perhaps the " master dog," would 
sit long at A.'s feet on the beach and look into his 
eyes as only one's own dog ever looks, one's own dog. 

Yet that was the year of an occurrence, the Lane 
tragedy, in which dogs showed another character. It 
happened at Easter. Old John Lane, his wife, and 
grandson, going to the festivities at Hopedale in a 
great snowstorm, never arrived. They were last seen 
by a sledge driver who drove off ahead of them, not 
on the ice but on some land portion of the route. In 
a few days the dogs came home and were put into 
confinement pending further knowledge of what had 
occurred. Nothing more was actually known until 
just as I came up on the coast. A good deal of search 
had been made, but the snow had leveled everything 
over. When found at last the woman and boy were 




ENOUGH FOR A CACHE 




HAIR SKINS DRYING, MISTINIPI, 1906 



1906 225 

in the covered kometik untouched by the dogs, but 
of old John Lane only the scattered bones were left. 
It was probable that he had fallen in the deep snow 
and could not rise, but it was the opinion of those 
most used to the life that his dogs would not have 
touched him while he was alive. The dogs were killed 
upon the finding of the party, as is always done under 
such circumstances. 

The question of hunger entered in, as the dogs may 
have stayed about until they V\^cre in straits. Here 
develops a curious trait of the Eskimo dog, though 
well known, apparently, in the region. Contrary to 
what one would expect, it is not dogs that are kept 
underfed that are most likely to attack persons, but 
the reverse. Not hunger, but the instinct of the chase 
in a strong, vigorous animal seems to be the main- 
spring. An animal heavily fed and gorged would 
doubtless be dull for a time, but a general high state 
is counted dangerous. It is the sporting instinct that 
is to be feared, the instinct of the fox hunter. 

Another fact in this connection long puzzled me. 
It appeared that dogs were more apt to be dangerous 
in " thick " weather, in times of falling snow, and 
when it is stormy and dark. In the end it occurred to 
me that as this did not seem to relate to anything in 
the human association it might go back to their origi- 
nal wolf period, and I asked the old hunters if the 
wolves hunted at such times. It seemed unlikely. 
We have all heard of the " truce of danger " among 
the animals, how the fiercest of them are mild in the 
presence of tumult and danger. But it appeared that 
wolves did hunt at such times, and particularly that 
deer killed by them were often found after the great 



226 Labrador 

storms. The old wolf instincts still wake the dogs 
to the chase when such weather comes on. 

The reason for their hunting caribou at such times 
seems plain. We who have hunted them in the woods 
of Maine and Canada know how extraordinarily pas- 
sive and approachable they are in snowstorms. They 
allow one to come very near and are reluctant to go 
far when disturbed. Doubtless they feel that as their 
tracks are covered in they are secure, for all deer are 
chiefly concerned about their back track. Obviously 
they are a good deal hidden in snowstorms. In bright, 
breezy days almost all birds and animals are aston- 
ishingly harder to approach than in dull weather. 

Jim Lane had taken up his father's place. I talked 
with him and various other members of the family 
about the circumstances of the old people's last journey. 
Those who remained at home that night told me some 
things I wish I had written down ; at the time it seemed 
as if I could not well forget them. Their accounts 
were not very different from some others that have 
been told in the world at one time or another. Their 
father, I think, appeared, and they both saw and heard. 
The dogs also were affected. 

As mailboat time approached, I made an arrange- 
ment with a neighbor to take me over to Fanny's 
when the weather permitted. The first calm morn- 
ing his boat appeared coming up the bay, and as a 
matter of course I left the boat I was in and got on. 
We made a quiet trip to Fanny's, with lightish winds, 
almost faint, before I found out that he had not been 
coming for me at all, but was only going to Jim's. 
He regarded the day as too rough. 

The week at Bromfield's had been a peaceful rest. 



1906 227 

The family are uncommonly pleasant to visit. But 
I was chewing a rather bitter cud, nevertheless, un- 
reconciled to leaving the country without a visit to 
the barrens, and if possible the Indians. If I left as 
things were the miserable story of the E.'s would 
follow me over the peninsula from side to side, and 
no lodge would be open to me. The picture grew in 
my mind of sitting on a rock with old Ostinitsu, hav- 
ing got to his camp in some way, and hammering the 
truth into him. To go alone would hardly do. I 
remembered the Eskimo Aaron at Nain, who spoke 
English and had been about the world; he had been 
willing to go inland with me at one time. If home 
new^s justified I could go north to Nain on the mail- 
boat and look for him. It would be better in any 
event to start from there and come south to the Assi- 
waban, and not to go from Fanny's, for now the fall 
winds were on, strong from the north and cold. It 
was better to have these subarctic trades on one's back. 

The steamer came the 26th, with good news from 
home, and I went up like a cork. In a matter of 
hours I was at Nain, looking for Aaron. Then my 
prospects fell off again, for he was away and no one 
else would go. The missionaries were preoccupied, 
chiefly about their steamer, the Harmony, now a 
month late — perhaps in the ice at Chidley. There 
was only one thing to do, and I slipped away alone 
the morning of the 27th, leaving the place to its cares. 
It was afterward reported that I had gone north. 

Everything was wrong. It was my first rowing 
that year and the gear was not tuned up; with a rope 
rowlock the oars are apt to twist a little and wear 
the hands. A southeast wind, a head wind, made 



228 Labrador 

things worse. Five miles south from Nain I came 
across a tent and a man codfishing, a nearly white 
man of good kind, named Webb, from Port Manvers, 
north. He would sail me along a few hours for the 
price of a quintal of fish, but as we both thought the 
wind was going to shift to southwest and relieve my 
difficulties, I rowed on. It was a mistake; the wind 
held, increased, and before long a wide, tide-worked 
passage barred my way, though doubtless I could have 
got across in the course of time I took to a smooth, 
barren island for the night, where there was a fairly 
sheltered lee and a little driftwood. The wind let up 
a little later, but I stuck to my fire. Rain came on, 
and sleeping under the canoe, which was rather narrow, 
the edges of my oilskin coat, which I had laid down 
on the ground, worked out under the drip and col- 
lected it under me. The coat was as good as a bath 
tub. Memo for travelers : Let not your ground-cloth 
get out under the eaves ! 

In the morning a northwester was on, cutting vic- 
iously about the passages. There was not much in 
moving until it let down, but by hard work I made a 
mile or two under a sort of lee. The squalls took a 
good deal of watching. There was not much fight 
in me that morning, perhaps from the hard first pull 
of the day before and the sort of night I had had. 
The surroundings were part of it. Those walls and 
rock slopes under Nain would touch almost any one's 
morale. I saw things happening; and as I was work- 
ing across a particularly wide water I found that I 
was not the only one who did, though the other, a gull, 
had his own point of view about it all. He was one 
of a number, chiefly black-backs and herring gulls, 



1906 229 

that were gyrating about in the puffs to leeward. This 
one, a fine, bnsiness-Hke burgomaster — they are large, 
stout birds — bore up wind and deliberately looked me 
over with his pale e3'e as he wore across a few yards 
away. We were thinking of the same contingency. 
That long beak with the hook is for tearing things on 
the beach. 

Then came a wide passage. The wind came with 
a long run here, from a deep bay reaching inland. 
Landing, I looked and looked again, then went back 
on a hill and looked more, trying to get the measure 
of the tide run on the other side. As things appeared 
I could have got over, but the trouble with such places 
is that it takes half an hour to get to the worst of the 
tide run, and in that time new currents may develop, 
let alone more wind, and everything go to the bad. 
Not only does the traveler without local tide knowledge 
find himself thus standing on one foot and then on the 
other at such times, but the bay people too. This 
time I had some two hours of it. 

I put out gingerly, but was no sooner beyond the 
sheltered water under the shore, and out where the 
rough water had been, than everything quieted down 
and gave me no trouble. There was still a tide 
crotch bobble beyond the turn at the crested hill which 
was almost but not quite troublesome, but from there 
the wind was nearly aft. 

For hours I rowed most of the time one side only, 
letting the wind do the work of the other oar. Such 
a yawing craft never was before. In the same wind 
the 1903 Oldtozvn would have rowed evenly and fast. 

I had not much hope of seeing any one along the 
way, for the bay people go to outside waters at this 



230 Labrador 

time for codfish. What I had in mind was to go as 
far as the high barrens anyway, beyond the forks of 
the Assiwaban, see the deer, and if things went well 
keep on to Mistinipi and the Indians. If they had 
moved with the deer, as they had said they might, the 
round trip from Nain inland and back to Davis Inlet 
might cover nearly three hundred miles. If I had not 
been a good deal worked up about the situation I should 
not have taken on so large a job alone, particularly 
at that time of year. Nor was it certain that the In- 
dians would be a pleasant or profitable find to make, 
anyway, as things were. 

What changed the face of things for me , for 
changed it was, was the finding of Edmund Winters 
at his place near Voisey's. Finding him at home I 
floored there, as a matter of course, and we all had 
things over in the evening. I owned up to not liking 
to make the trip alone. In the course of the evening 
Edmund and his wife talked together, then asked me 
if their boy would do me any good. 

"How old is he?" 

"Fifteen, but he is strong." 

" I'll take him ! Now show me the boy." 

About seven in the morning, August 29th, we 
started for the Assiwaban, some eight miles. 
Richard had never been in a canoe before, and I let 
him row while I paddled. We lunched at my camp- 
ing place of July, where the date and record I had 
left at that time, as always in lone stopping places, 
looked quite historical now. A seal swam about at 
one hundred and fifty yards, throwing himself clear 
of the water in a magnificent back somersault at our 



1906 231 

shot. It did not follow that we had scraped him, they 
seem to do it for fun sometimes. 

On the portage by the falls black flies were plenty 
in the bushes, as is the way in September. Two 
miles above on a gravel beach we camped, with an eye 
for trout, and the same redoubtable salmon fly I had 
used in July came into play, with its eight feet of line 
and a stick. We slapped the shallow water at twilight 
in good Assiwaban style, close to the shore, soon get- 
ting all we wanted; there were ten trout weighing 
some twenty-five pounds. We would haul them 
around sideways without any play and run them up 
the sloping bank. Richard cleaned them in the dusk. 
In the morning he called to me that there were two 
kinds, and so there were. Namaycush some were 
surely, one nearly two feet long The few I have seen 
in the lakes have been deepish fish, but these were long 
and rangy, as if living always in running water They 
were brilliantly colored 

The rapids next day went slowly; Richard was not 
used to the running water. At our camp on the 
Natua-ashish trout were jumping, but our stick rod 
would not reach out to them; we did not need them 
anyway. There were few game tracks along the 
beaches, even in this year of caribou. Next day we 
were well punished getting toward the wind lake, 
inching for hours against vicious squalls; here some 
trained paddling power would have served. All at 
once the fuss abated, and the long wind lake, now on 
the Canadian map as Cabot lake, let us through easily 
after luncheon; and although rain held us half a day, 
we made the forks September ist. Rather than try 



232 Labrador 

the bad boating beyond in cold, wet weather we hid 
the canoe and some provisions at the forks. A can of 
pea-meal ration left there in July was intact. We 
had, by the way, left enough tins of this along back, 
cached beyond possible discovery, to take us out afoot 
to the coast at least half fed. There was not much 
danger of personal harm from the Indians, but with 
their own peculiar humor they might like to see how 
light of supplies and outfit we could travel. 

We started for the highlands with a few^ days' sup- 
plies of bacon, hardbread, tea, and tin rations, the 
light round tent, and a blanket apiece. The combina- 
tion gun, a few cartridges, a folding camera and films 
pretty much completed the loads of, say, thirty-five and 
twenty-two pounds. Richard had a hooded Eskimo 
frock or " dickey." We had tin cups and a small pail 
for the tea, and a rectangular dripping pan of sheet 
iron some two and a half inches deep for frying and 
stewing. A scjuare pan is less likely to upset than a 
round one, and fits such things as fish and most shapes 
of meat better. These " cooking tools " were very 
light. A notched stick three or four feet long, shoved 
into the ring of the pan, saved bending over, as one 
has to with a short handle. Such a handle is a great 
convenience with a thin pan, which must be held over 
the fire by the cook most of the time or the fish will 
burn. 

It was a black, misty day of strong north wind, cold 
and cheerless, but luckily the wind came from the 
side and not ahead. The first caribou appeared soon 
in the deer bush among the rolling ridges, and I 
made a high miss. They were nearer than they looked, 
as things in the barrens are usually. There were 




u 
< 

Q 

w 

an 
I — I 
< 



1906 233 

seven or eight young bucks and does. It was late 
when we started, and as the climb to the high level 
was more than a thousand feet, by the end of the 
afternoon we were tired, although only twelve or fif- 
teen miles out. We were then on a high reach of 
countr)'- leading west, with a streak of scattered spruce, 
dead and alive, running along for quite a distance; a 
sort of growth which generally appears on such damp 
north exposures. Rain began, and we put up the tent 
in the lee of a stunted tree or two. Wood came easily ; 
the dead trees, white and hard, four or five inches 
through at the butt, were rotten at the ground and 
pushed over easily. With a butt under each arm we 
trailed them quickly to camp, and in twenty minutes 
had plenty of wood for all night, though scattered as 
the trees were it had taken some acres of land to 
furnish them. It had been ver}^ cold and raw all day, 
and occasional snow came with the rain. Now the 
gale increased. Only a wind-break of such evergreen 
stuff as we could get together enabled us to keep the 
tent and fire from blowing away. If it had not rained 
much we could have used the tent as an extra blanket 
and got on without fire, but as it was we agreed that 
one of us must stay up and keep the other warm. 
The boy had the first turn. He was off in an instant, 
and though the night was long it seemed a pity to wake 
him, especially as the fire took experienced manage- 
ment. At times I dozed in the firelight. Before morn- 
ing the wind shifted east, a warmer quarter, and fell off 
a little, also the rain. I moved the wind-break to suit, 
and dawn came at last. How the boy did sleep ! I 
thought I should have to drag him twice around the 
fire before getting him awake. When at last he be- 



234 Labrador 

came conscious he jumped readily to his feet and went 
to work with a will. Things were quieting down, I 
was all but asleep anyway, and in a few minutes must 
have gone well down to the level he had pulled up 
from. In three hours or so I felt a touch and faintly 
heard a whisper, " Cartridge ! Shot cartridge ! " I 
waked enough to find two or three and fell away again. 
When I finally turned out the boy was picking four 
ptarmigan, which he had killed with two shots. He 
was a silent boy, and a little shy then, having never 
been away from his people before. I was of a strange 
breed and he made no advances, but was an unusual 
boy nevertheless; his little white "dickey" held most 
of the good qualities of dog, boy, and man. 

Off we went, a little late after the two nights we 
had made of it, one for each of us, and in four or 
five miles had flanked a long pond and were broad off 
the high portage. We had occasionally seen some sign 
of the Indian route — it is not a trail — here a stone 
laid upon a boulder on the crest of a ridge, there a 
burnt brand at the edge of a pond. The Indians go 
free, high over the shoulder of a hill, sloping off to 
the right or left for some winding pond, across long 
levels and up some unbelievable slope — but where 
the footing is good. There is no visible path from 
where they leave the bushes near the forks to the hills 
south of the high portage where their signs appear no 
more. 

A bunch of caribou appeared before luncheon. 
They were feeding on the deerbush in a sheltered de- 
pression. We needed a meat cache there for the return 
and sacrificed a doe, weighted our packs reluctantly 
with meat, and went along familiar ponds to the south- 



1906 235 

west. We were carrying with a string over the head, 
with twigs under it to bear on, and another string 
around the points of the shoulders. The packs so 
carried kept wonderfuly steady; they seemed a part 
of us. There was no swinging and lurching as we 
twisted about among the boulders, then perhaps down 
into the mud and up with a stretch upon a stone again. 
The wet weather had spoiled the traveling, doubled the 
work. 

Misty rain drove from north again as we camped. 
But for being in the lee of a rifted boulder, some 
twenty feet long, we could not possibly have kept the 
tent up; it flapped and loosened as the gusts came 
around the ends of the rock, sometimes from one 
side and again the other. We would shove out the 
heavy stones which held the edges down and tighten 
up a little now and then, but it looked as if we should 
have the tent down before morning. Once in the 
evening I put my head up over the rock and took 
the wind and fine rain in my face. It was about im- 
possible to bear the sting. We slept fairly; it was 
not so cold as the night before. 

Many caribou were feeding on the smooth hill north 
of Long pond next da}'', moving off and on as we 
approached, and circling widely for our wind. They 
showed more curiosity than fear. A perky young 
buck walked up within fifty feet, dancing and per- 
forming as he tried to make us out behind a boulder. 
Catching our wind at last, he turned short, dove down 
the steep hill, dashed across the wide valley, and out 
of sight, as if pursued by demons. His instant change 
from a dancing prince to a panic-stricken fugitive, 
fairly falling over himself down the hill and not look- 



236 Labrador 

ing back, was very funny. An hour later we re- 
marked that he must be going yet. 

Four or five of the deer that we had disturbed in 
crossing the hill soon appeared swimming across Long 
pond below us, looking like ducks in the distance. 
Through the calmer hours came occasionally the warn- 
ing note of geese as we passed the ponds. They 
spotted us far away on the ridges. The cry of loons 
was frequent, usually high in the air; their September 
uneasiness was on, they would soon be gone. Soon 
the geese and loons would be at the shore; indeed 
by the time we were out the former were honking at 
us again from low points and islands, and at Fanny's 
I saw some part of the " million geese " Spracklin 
had told of there — a small part. There were no 
mice this year. Whether they had moved or died off 
is not clear. There is one circumstance that supports 
their migrating — their habit of swimming the rivers 
in numbers at night. It would seem that they could 
not have any motive for merely swimming about, but 
were going somewhere. In 1905 they were so numer- 
ous on the land that we often saw two at a time as 
we were walking. Every low twig was riddled by 
them. One could not lay bread or meat on the moss 
without picking up a dozen or two of their minute 
droppings. It was pleasanter this year without them, 
but in their presence one thing was always worth con- 
sidering, that so long as they were about one could not 
possibly starve. They were like field mice, with 
rather stumpy tails. There were lemmings, also, two 
kinds as I remember. The idea of the mice being 
night swimmers is only inferential; they were rarely 
if ever on the water daytimes, yet all the trout of any 



1906 237 

size were full of them. A trout of only a pound 
weight would contain several. The fish actually 
tasted mousey, and we used to rip them up as fast as 
caught and let the mice drop out, which seemed to help 
matters. 

The wolves sang at night, never very near. The 
pitch seemed a little higher than that of the Eskimo 
dogs. The stead)'- hunting call of the wolves came 
sometimes in alternation with the cry of the loons. 
Ptarmigan were scarce. In 1905 we ought to have 
seen a hundred and fifty in such a walk, instead of the 
dozen we did in fact. Ravens were rather plenty, and 
jays, the latter very dark. 

The rainy camp at the " Black Rock," as we called 
it, was the last at which we put up a tent, after that 
we used the tent for a blanket. The nights were gen- 
erally freezing, and we had little enough covering, but 
slept snug together in our clothes and always fared 
well. The packs were now a little heavy with meat, 
and the next night R. owned up to being very tired. 
Just before stopping we started a band of four great 
stags with immense horns. They would not let us 
come nearer than a quarter of a mile, and went off at 
a hard run. Presently they appeared on the side of a 
steep hill quite near, slanting up at a great pace. They 
were a grand sight in their wild rush along the sky 
line. The old stags are always shy. 

Now, with fine weather, it was good to be out. 
There were no mosquitoes, and with their departure 
the curse of the country was lifted. Now we could 
sit down in peace, or walk, or have our thoughts. As 
the moss dried out on the hills near the height of 
land they looked almost snowy — they were velvet to 



238 Labrador 

the feet, and the days of walking were never too long. 
Sometimes we went over the hills, sometimes along 
the deer paths by the lakes. 

At the third camp we left the tent, some food, and 
my skin boots. These last are as nothing in such a 
walk; when long wet they become pulpy, " tripy " — 
and sharp stones cut through easily. This cache was 
at the thatched tree where Q. and I had stopped with 
Indians the year before, on a small, pretty lake over- 
looked by a fine, rounded hill rising abruptly from the 
south side. 

With beautiful Hawk Lake to the left we kept the 
highlands beyond and crossed the height of land in 
a high saddle, the third notch north of the regular 
portage route. Beyond were wide, boggy levels, well 
afloat, but we made Mistinipi before night at a point 
three or four miles down the lake, our crosscut having 
saved distance which we paid for in hard bog travel. 
During the afternoon a young stag furnished us with 
a reassuring cache of meat. There were tamaracks 
where we finally stopped, on a friendly level beside the 
lake, where wind could not do much harm, and where 
if necessary, being tentless, we could put up a brush 
roof. It rained a bit through the night, but as it was 
warm we were not the worse A long belt of trees 
following the lake was full of ravens, cawing almost 
like crows, but with more modulation and a pleasanter 
voice. They had gathered there with an eye to certain 
deer carcasses, hauled up here and there along the 
shore by Indians. In the morning we left our 
blankets, took the camera, gun, and a bite to eat, and 
started for the main narrows to see if the Indians were 
still there. I was not very hopeful. Nevertheless in 



1906 239 

an hour, as we turned a point, across a wide bay ap- 
peared three deerskin lodges, surprisingly conspicuous 
and handsome in the sunshine. We brightened up 
and pushed around the bay in high spirits. Old 
Ostinitsu was cornered at last. On a point between 
us and the camp was a camp site lately abandoned. 
Pieces of rotten meat lay about, and other rubbish 
not inviting; it was not pleasant. There was a wind- 
dow of large horns, in the velvet, stacked together. 
I think the old meat was left there to attract foxes 
and the like; the trapping season would soon be on. 
The Indians' ordinary camping places are kept clean. 
Four or five Indians were sitting in a little dug out, 
hollow depression on a knoll back of the lodges, their 
faces turned rather away from us across the lakes. 
We were within a hundred yards of them before they 
noticed us. Then one happened to look our way, 
spoke to the others, and all rose, tall against the sky, 
and descended to meet us. We walked forward, our 
gun empty and thrown open. They were the older 
men. Ostinitsu I knew, but not the others. They 
looked surprised to see us there. " Tante mitshiuap? " 
O. asked, "Where is your tent?" I explained, and 
he remembered the spot. Where is your canoe? 
" Mistastin lishtuets." How many in the party? 
" Only the boy," I said looking back at Richard, " but 
he is a good boy." The men looked at each other, 
spoke a little, and seemed at a loss. There was no 
doubt of their surprise at the situation. White men 
did not travel that way. I took the lead. " Can you 
let me have a pair of moccasins? There has been 
much rain, and the country is wet and hard to travel," 
and I turned up my foot to show the holes. O. mur- 



240 Labrador 

mured something, but seemed absent. Presently we 
went on to the lodges. Women, mostly in cloth 
dresses, others in deerskins, and children, came out 
and stood about, but nothing much developed, and I 
felt it in the air that they did not know precisely what 
to do with us. To give them a chance to talk matters 
over I thought I would go off out o£ the way, and 
accordingly started with Richard up the long slope of 
the hill west, saying to Ostinitsu, " You know it 
snowed and blew when we were here a year ago, and 
now I want to get a picture of the lake while it is good 
weather," — this of course in Indian — and leaving our 
gun on a rock I asked him to put it inside if it rained, 
for it was a little showery. He nodded vaguely and 
we departed. 

As we approached the camp again an hour after- 
ward all the people were standing together about a 
little tree, evidently in council. They spread about as 
we came on. Some of the younger men, Nahpayo, 
Pakuunnoh, and Puckway, whom I knew, came and 
shook hands warmly. O. also had turned altogether 
agreeable and asked us to stay with them. We were 
glad to accept, and I asked him for a canoe to sleep 
under, also to have our things fetched up from the 
place where we had slept. He demurred at our sleep- 
ing under a canoe, pointing to a little cloth tent used to 
store dried meat in, and urging us to use that, at the 
same time sending a canoe for the baggage, with Rich- 
ard along to find the place. 

My chance had come. I wandered about with the 
camera and made the most of the situation. Smiles 
prevailed everywhere as I went about; we were guests 
of the camp. It must have been agreed that we de- 



1906 241 

served something for our walk.. The older women 
did various operations on the skins with their different 
tools, made pemmican, went through many acts of their 
routine. They lifted the covering skins from what- 
ever I cast my eye upon, showed me what was there 
and what everything was for. Most of their dried 
meat and other things were piled close alongside the 
lodges, covered with skins. 

Two or three young women, *' buds " of the season, 
were round about without visible duties. They 
watched me with interest at times, or hob-nobbed with 
the older women over the skins they were working, 
discussing this or that point, perhaps the use to which 
one skin and another was best adapted, whether they 
would best go this way, or that. A younger girl, the 
daughter of Minowish, one of the best of the older 
men, certainly had eyes, nor were any of these 
younger ones failing in a certain coquettish air. The 
housewives were pleasantly grave and simple. These 
older women looked hard worked and thin, under all 
their unusual toil upon meat and skins, besides their 
household duties. The men appeared well fed and 
easy. The man's work of providing game was mere 
sport as things were. 

The next time I saw these people, this time on the 
George, the women were comparatively round faced, 
and looked as if life was going well, while the men 
were trained down and hard conditioned. The deer 
were scattered sparsely over the country, the food 
scaffolds were low, and the hunting men had to be al- 
ways afoot over the country. So it goes, too much or 
too little, one year and another. Whether, in this fol- 
lowing winter, the deer still remain and all may eat, or 



242 Labrador 

the women and children are waiting, with small hope, 
for what the hunters may bring, is as it may be. Too 
often the game fails utterly. If still in the country 
east of the George the people should be able, if neces- 
sary, to force their way to the coast for relief before 
the worst. 

A straight old woman, dressed all in caribou skins, 
came to me and began to explain something with great 
earnestness, but I found it hard to make much of what 
she said. After a time I understood that a young man 
was ill; I was not to go to the lodge where he was. 
The young man, it seemed, was about the size and age 
of a certain girl, and she pointed to another lodge. I 
thought little of the matter then, so much was going on 
that was distracting. Old Nijwa, the woman who had 
done the talking, asked if I had a bit of tobacco to 
spare, for they all smoke, but I had not at that mo- 
ment. Later I walked toward her lodge with a small 
piece, speaking as I approached. She flew to the 
door, warned me away with extreme energy, and 
pointed to a girl evidently very ill, behind in the tent. 
Then I understood ; there were two young people ill, a 
young man and a girl. She was so excited that she 
hardly noticed the tobacco. I have often thought of 
the unusual conscience she showed in warning us; 
too rarely is the like to be met with nearer home. 

They had speared no less than twelve or fifteen hun- 
dred deer in a few weeks. From three to five hundred 
carcasses, skinned and washed out, were hauled up on 
the gravel beach, drying hard and black in the sun 
and the cool September wind. There were no flies 
about them and no smell. Later the meat would be 
stripped off and baled away. At first I thought the 



1906 243 

carcasses had been thrown away, but not so; meat I 
had seen them traveling with evidently came from 
just such whole carcasses. The head was always gone 
— the hunter himself must eat it or forfeit his fortune 
in the chase; the rest belongs to the group in common. 
Not all the carcasses were complete, sometimes a leg 
or other part was gone. The spectacle of so many 
blackened carcasses, more or less dismembered, was not 
pleasing, at any rate not to us who had never suf- 
fered famine ; it was a savage feast, alike for Indian, 
wolf, and raven. 

O. asked me if I had any bread — he probably 
wanted it for the sick ones. I said no, I was getting 
to be an old man and could not carry much across the 
barrens — there had been plenty of caribou for us to 
travel on; but I handed him some of the pea-meal 
ration. The old man looked at me, reached out his 
long arms, laid his hands upon my shoulders and said, 
" You may be an old man, but you would make a 
great chief trader!" They still hoped I would come 
and trade. I had no sense of overfamiliarity on his 
part. It is remarkable how intimate these people can 
be when they care to, without the least offense. It is 
the mark of their quality, perceived by many who 
have known them. Of these long ago was Baron 
Lahontan, who, coming from the most brilliant court 
of Europe to the tribes of the Upper St. Lawrence, 
was able to say, in effect, " As for myself I must 
acknowledge that the manners and personality of these 
people are entirely agreeable to me." And in a recent 
day on Maniquagan river came the almost unwilling 
observation of a companion from the Anglo-Saxon 
world, a world which has scant grace and unseeing 



244 Labrador 

eyes for native races, " After all, the natural Indian 
is a good deal of a gentleman." 

A little fire was made outdoors at ten or eleven and 
a large copper kettle went on, filled well up with 
crushed marrowbones. As it boiled Ostinitsu stirred 
it with a four-foot stick and all the camp gathered by. 
After it had boiled enough O. skimmed the grease off 
the top, brought out an earthen bowl, took up a pint 
and a half of the broth and offered it to me. It was 
a little tallowy; the under part of the stock had evi- 
dently been boiled before, but it was not bad. I did 
not get quite enough. 

Richard came back in due time with the baggage. 
The party had come upon two deer swimming the 
lake. The canoe was run hard upon one, which was 
speared, and then the other, both in the back. One 
of them nearly upset the canoe. Richard said the 
blood spurted as high as the gunwale. The deer were 
left with just enough strength to reach the shore, 
where they fell in the edge of the water without be- 
ing able to get out. The Indians took the skins and 
the best of the meat, leaving the rest. 

Richard was hungry enough by this time, for it was 
long since breakfast, and I advised him to take his 
share of the soup, but after looking into the kettle 
he shook his head. Ostinitsu looked at him sharply, 
but said nothing. I had to get up some tea and ra- 
tion for the boy. 

Some of the Indians went up to the lookout with 
us, taking along a little spyglass. Deer were visible 
three or four miles away on the ridges, passing west 
and not coming to the crossing, perhaps owing to 
the wind, which made the lake a little rough. The 




Ah 
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Q 



1906 245 

glass was not very good, and I could see them only 
when their hacks were above the sky line. No deer 
came across that day. 

The spear is a sharp-edged, diamond-shaped blade 
of steel, on a slender shaft three or four feet long. 
As soon as the on-coming deer are safely away from 
land the older men from the lookout signal the young 
fellows down at the shore, and these eager young 
wolves fairly lift their canoe over the water for the 
prey. A long windrow of horns, besides a separate 
pile of very large ones, were close by, and each pair 
must have stood for four or five does and smaller deer 
killed. It is a matter of policy that the horns are 
piled together; if they are left about it is understood 
that the chief caribou spirit will be ofifended at the 
disrespect, so that the deer will scatter when they come 
through the country, and be hard to get. 

After a while, though I was not thinly dressed, the 
cool wind became too much for me, and I turned to 
go down the hill. The people laughed, as well they 
might. Some of the four and five year olds were 
about in perfect comfort, though wearing only one 
scant garment of caribou skin; near half their chests 
and legs were bare. The people stand cold as well 
as Eskimo, but cannot keep their working strength as 
well under starvation. 

Four or five women had gone about sewing moc- 
casins, and I hoped that one pair or another would 
turn out to be for me. A pair indeed! When the 
time came they gave them all to me, every pair, and 
smoked tongues and meat until we were embarrassed. 
Luckily I had some half dollars for them, which they 
accepted readily, examining the designs upon them 



246 Labrador 

with pleased interest. Most of all they were interested 
in some small photographs of my children, noticing 
with exclamations one of the boy in an Indian head- 
dress of long feathers. They passed the pictures about 
and talked about them, but I could not understand 
much of what they said. Soon Ostinitsu's quiet wife 
went to her lodge and came back with two children 
of eight or nine. Standing by the side of Ostinitsu, 
the children between us, she said simply, " These are 
our children." She knew her jewels. 

So the day went on. Richard moved about con- 
tentedly, approved by all. Indians like boys. His 
share of presents was not small. Few had seen what 
we were seeing, perhaps none from the outer world 
of to-day — the primitive phase in its unchanged 
estate, on this immemorial range of the caribou. 
Some things that the people had were from white 
hands, but the essential life was the same; the man- 
ners, the occupations, the means to a livelihood, the 
ancient belief. 

To me they had the civil deference of bred people 
to a guest. When I pitched away my heavy old 
worn-through, thin moccasins, which, however, had 
strong material left in them, Pakuunnoh picked them 
up, brought them to me, and asked if he might have 
them, an exhibition of mere manners. He knew I 
was done with them. So with a tin can thrown away 
at Mistastin one year, it was brought to us in the same 
way. From Richard and me, there at Mistinipi, they 
seemed to expect nothing. 

We had meant to stay some time, a week or more. 
But toward the end of the day I had time for reflec- 
tion and the matter of the sickness in camp rose to my 



1906 247 

mind. The trouble was probably measles, and I had 
had it, but the boy's danger was serious. With peo- 
ple of his blood measles was apt to be as fatal as small- 
pox. Indeed Nahpayo's young wife had suggestive 
pits in her face, hardly healed, and this was another 
matter. Richard's people had said to me, " We think 
you will take care of him," but if he was caught in 
the barrens with measles the result would be almost 
sure. Moreover, north storms were now seasonable 
and might bring heavy snow and cold; in truth just 
this thing happened three days after we were out of 
the country. 

I spoke to Ostinitsu, saying I was afraid for the 
boy, and asked him to send us to the head of the lake 
by canoe. He seemed to appreciate my situation, and 
a little later, at a word from him, Pakuunnoh and 
Puckway put in a large rough-water birch and we were 
off, all four paddling. The people of the camp stood 
upon the bank above the line of deer carcasses, a silent 
group, and waved us as we moved away. A stiff 
little sea was coming down the lake. We moved into 
it like a battleship, throwing high the spray, but no 
water came in. The spray divided and fell outside in 
a marvelous way. I had never seen the like. We 
made fast time, having almost no cargo and strong 
power. They put us off at a little eastern bay near 
the end, where we boiled a last kettle together and 
shared what we had — our pea-meal ration against 
their deer tongues. 

The sun went low. Pakuunnoh pointed at it. 

" Shakashtuet piishum," he said, " The sun is set- 
ting," then pointed toward their camp. They must 
be going. T nodded and turned to the fire. I did not 



248 Labrador 

want to see them make the miserable averted Naskapi 
departure, especially after the day we had had to- 
gether, but I heard their paddles dip away fast and 
knew they were gone. 

In a little, as I bent over the fire getting up more 
tea, there came a sound from the lake and I looked 
up. The big canoe was swung broad-side, and the 
two Indians were waving their long arms and whoop- 
ing until the echoes came back. For some minutes 
it lasted. This was the real Naskapi good by — to 
friends. We sprang up and waved back, shouting; 
they turned the canoe, went fast down the lake before 
the wind, and it was four years before I saw any 
face of the tribe again. 

In snug, sheltered ground with enough of wood, a 
mile on, we made a sky camp and were off in the gray 
of the morning. I was anxious about the measles. 
In the evening I had singed everything we had taken 
from the Indians in the fire, by way of sterilizing 
them, but we had ourselves been a good deal exposed 
early in the day. Whether Richard was worried I 
never knew; we did not mention the subject on the 
march. From the way he held to the trail from day- 
light to dark I suspected that he was thinking. 

It was well that we cached meat on the outward 
trip, for not a deer did we see on the way home. There 
were many tracks, and doubtless there were some deer 
to be seen if we had kept our eyes well out, but the 
newer tracks were all leading one way, to the south 
and west behind us. Our pace was good, light as we 
were, and night found us beyond the close hills on the 
broad slopes off Long pond. A cold wind came from 
north, there was no shelter, and after the shower of the 




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1906 249 

day we were long looking for a dry place to lie down 
on. In exposed places such as we were in one watches 
the weather signs anxiously before dark, for the nights 
are long and there is time between night and morning 
for great changes to come on. Now the storms were 
sudden and cold and a foot or more of snow might 
come over night. In the short nights of summer, if 
the signs are good at dark, there is little chance of a 
bad change before dawn. By the middle of Septem- 
ber the situation is different, and if a norther should 
come in the night one would almost surely have to 
drive with it until stopped by some lake, or at best 
come upon some boulder or bush to get behind, per- 
haps for a day or two, and without fire. Then would 
come, if one could do it, a wallow of days in snow to 
the forks, without winter clothes and in moccasins 
like blotting paper. If the boy should be taken ill 
during such a period his chance would be small. 

Most of one's misgivings are unnecessary, but a 
tremendous storm did come on a few days later, and 
the barrens must have been a wild place for seven or 
eight days. After all, a certain habit of considering 
possibilities serves at least to keep one's perceptions 
keen. 

Our moccasins were stiff with ice when we got out 
in the morning, and we walked away on the top of 
the frozen moss. After the sun came up we began 
to sink through. Our meat at the Black Rock was 
just prime by this time, and we felt mere kings by our 
lunch fire there. We were having a royal walk ! 
From there to our last meat cache it was wet and 
stony and boggy, a hard walk of hours ; though at last, 
tired but cheerful, we walked up to the tree cache. 



250 Labrador 

Now the bad going was over, now we would have some 
more of that prime meat; for miles we had thought of 
nothing but that particular leg of caribou. Instead we 
had a surprise; not a sign of it was left! Our faces 
would have done to photograph. 

The carcass of the deer was not far away and we 
went over to see what had happened to that. Before 
we got there a large wolf appeared, off beyond a 
brook, trotting briskly toward the carcass. He saw 
us, and instead of stopping, as most animals do, kept 
on and away with only a look ; but before disappear- 
ing he did stop, at some two hundred and twenty yards, 
and I shot carefully, elbows on knees. The broad 
double muzzle of the gun lifted a little, and shut off 
the view for an instant, but I could see the wolf shoot 
high into the air, then gather and go over the crest 
behind him in a wabbling canter. It was bad, bushy 
walking in that direction, so, cross and tired, I turned 
back to the packs without going over. Later the boy, 
who had seen clearly, said he was sure the beast was 
hit, as he came down in a ball and took time to get 
up. I ought to have gone over there. Anyway, he 
would steal no more meat. 

Crossed in our dream we ill naturedly left the place, 
going on a mile or two before putting the kettle on. 
We had food enough, and indeed the pea-meal ration 
was better to travel on than the meat would have been. 
Mixed with a little hot bacon fat in the corner of the 
frying-pan, and followed by tea, it was the best thing 
to stand by one on a hard road of anything I have 
ever had. It was substantially like the German crhs- 
wurst, but with dried meat mixed in, a sort of dried 



1906 251 

meat sawdust. Whether dry or cooked, in soup or 
cakes, it was always good, and kept one going. 

Richard and I were acquainted now, and talked. 
On the first of the outer road he had been shy, with 
little to say but " Yessir " and " No sir," and had no 
idea of the way of camp things Now he did all the 
camp work handily and well. An early doubt on my 
part as to whether he was a bit lacking or really a 
genius had passed away. He had imagination and 
sensitiveness. The caribou killing we had to do hurt 
him. Curiously, part Eskimo that he was, he liked 
the Indians. At Mistinipi, as we went up the hill with 
the camera to leave them to themselves, he remarked 
on their fine looks — what good manners they had ! 
How clean they were in their ways and cooking, com- 
pared with the Eskimo ! He had once been out with 
his father and Eskimo in winter, and hated the 
Eskimo way of killing wounded deer with stones, to 
save cartridges. After we left the Indians he again 
dwelt upon their superiorities — what fine people they 
were! This from a shore boy of Eskimo blood, whose 
life had been passed where almost none but Eskimo 
passed the door, was the last testimony one would 
expect. 

We shared everything, of course. At night my 
oil jacket would go down on the moss, then the two 
blankets, then the tent as a coverlet. Close together 
we slept those frosty nights, under the stars and the 
waving north lights, each of us as good as a blanket 
to the other. Then the fire in the early gray, and the 
quick cooking — there was no bread to make. We 
ate the meat Indian fashion without salt. The scrap 



252 Labrador 

of bacon gave us all we used, and the little bag of 
salt we had was never opened. Until the small sup- 
ply of hardbread was out we both had a tendency to 
prig it between meals, from keen starch hunger. At 
the last the dingy crumbs tasted plainly sweet, a curi- 
ous fact that I have seen noted somewhere since. It 
looked to us as candy does to a child. 

Richard's eyes were a marvel. My own are apt to 
dull a little when walking long with a headstrap pack, 
but he saw everything All the game, without excep- 
tion, he saw first. He was good, too, at keeping his 
bearings, and once, when we had swung in a long 
semicircle around a hill and were going back west, 
put me to flat discomfiture, the worse that I had dis- 
agreed with him sharply. It was a little time before 
I perceived that as I was taking it the setting sun was 
exactly in the east. Perhaps it was well for Richard's 
soul that I caught him nearly as far wrong a little 
later. 

We both wanted to walk all night on the day of the 
wolf-looted cache, as it would bring us to the canoe 
by morning. I wonder to this day if Richard was 
thinking of what I was, of being taken down with the 
Indian sickness. But the ground became rough and 
hilly at dark, we could not see our feet, and a cold 
breeze and a snow squall kept us hugged close under 
some lucky little bushes where we had had supper. 
It was very bleak and barren along there. 

The hills were white for an hour in the morning. 
Before long we crossed a commanding ridge from 
which the walls of the wind-lake portal, many miles 
away, opened high and imposing. About nine R. 
spotted a bear a mile away plain against the white 



1906 253 

moss. I was disposed to let him go, as he was off 
our course, but Richard was eager and we turned that 
way. Some bushes gave an approach. It was a large 
he-animal, nosing the flat blueberry vines on a smooth 
level. I fired at near a hundred yards, when he leaped 
and ran fast for some little trees, among which we 
found him dead. They are slow to skin, like a beaver ; 
there is no end of knife-work. It took a good while, 
for the bear was large, but there was no fat to mess 
up with — this year there were no mice for the bears, 
and the meat was lean, tender, and sweet. A berry 
bear is the thing. When at last I straightened up from 
the long job of skinning, there, not three hundred 
yards away, were two other bears, one a large cub. 
My films were just out, to my sorrow, for there were 
bushes near the bears and we could have gone close. 
We waved our caps and shouted, and the show 
vanished in a twinkling. 

The skin and meat we had taken were heavy, and 
by the time we made the canoe, about one o'clock, we 
were well warmed up. The wind lake let us by rather 
decently, but once in the river a raw sea wind came 
up the valley with a chill which went through us, 
unused as we were to sitting still, and we camped about 
dark under a wooded point not far below the lake. 
The sheltered place seemed like a tavern with cheer, 
after the naked barrens. A fine driftwood fire blazed 
long after we were asleep. 

Now came a little personal experience. In the 
night I awoke uncomfortable and found myself 
broken out on the body just as Ostinitsu had described 
the sick young man to be. Some fever went with the 
great irritation, and I began to speculate on what was 



254 Labrador 

coming. I had had measles, and ought to be immune, 
but remembered the pits on the face of Napao's wife. 
Who, on the coast, could be expected to take care of a 
smallpox stranger? It would be almost certain death 
to any native to do it. For an hour or two I thought 
very hard. Plans of getting in some way to Dr. Gren- 
fell's hospital at Indian Harbor, some four hundred 
miles away, would not work out. I had thought that 
at one time or another I had considered about all the 
things that could well happen to one knocking about 
in this way — accident, starvation, freezing, drown- 
ing, or ordinary illness, but here was a new idea. I 
was never, I believe, more inclined to call myself 
names for wandering about at all in such places. It 
was an unpleasant situation. 

At last I remembered some old bouts I had had 
with hives, heat rash, in hot weather, and that alkali 
was the thing. It would ease the impossible itching, 
whatever the cause. There was a piece of old castile 
soap in my kit, the nearest alkaline thing available. 
It remains to be said that before this remedy my 
cause of woe faded readily away. Still the circum- 
stance was not a dream, for before I left the coast the 
nuisance came on more than once, with fever, and 
again shook my faith a little; perhaps it was really not 
so uninteresting a matter as hives. The immediate 
cause on the river was doubtless the unusual perspira- 
tion from carrying the heavy unfleshed bearskin with 
head and feet attached, in addition to my pack, 

Ah-pe-wat, the young man at Mistinipi, died of his 
illness, as did the girl. It was said afteward that some 
of old Edward's tribe had carried up measles to the 
Indians from the shore. 




^: 
Pi 
o 

o 

o 

-Pi 

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1906 255 

The next day, the 13th of September, was our last 
day out. Passing through the great pools there were 
trout everywhere even at that late date; a little far- 
ther down some geese cheered us with their talk and 
presence, and a good many seal heads showed below 
the falls. One of the seals came very near, almost 
under the boat, near our tea place at my old roost of 
July. Richard shot at it with his forty-four, now 
taken out of cache along the river, but missed. It 
is a curious thing that with all his experience on water 
he was if anything a little less steady on it than I. 
His father had said when we started, " He will do 
well on the water, I am sure of that, but you may be 
too much for him walking." Not so. He was un- 
easy as we ran the slight rapids of the river coming 
down, and curiously enough, I saw all the water game 
first, up river and outside. He was, of course, per- 
fectly easy on the large inlet where he was at home, 
though not remarkable. But on the land he was for 
his age a wonder of endurance, courage, and all the 
silent qualities that take one over the barrens un- 
starved, and make for the joy of the trail. 

At just sunset we cleared Assiwaban Point. Tide 
and wind were wrong as far as the low point of Long 
island, where a stout clangor of geese saluted us in the 
dark, and the metallic rush of beds of unseen ducks 
sounded again and again to the front. At ten we 
called out to the sleeping Winters. They had not been 
worried ; that morning for the first time the mother 
had remarked that we might be looked for now. But 
I was thankful, on the whole, to hand their boy over 
without harm, as thankful as I had been for having 
him. The little bread upon the waters, sowed in 



256 Labrador 

carelessness when E, had had his trifles to sell two 
years before, and without which I fancy he would not 
have thought of offering me his son, had certainly 
come back to me. The trip was not long, little over 
two hundred miles as we had travelled, nor had there 
been any hardships, but considering all — the season, 
the ordinary chances of the way, and the little plot 
in the Indian matter, things might not have gone so 
well. 

It was now a run for the steamer and home. It 
ought to have taken a fortnight or so. What it did 
take was forty-two days — six weeks. Apropos is 
the remark of an old fisherman at House Harbor, the 
evening before Q. and I caught the Virginia there, in 
1905. A few men from schooners about were 
gathered in Voisey's little house by the stove, and some 
one remarked that Skipper So and So had got his 
cargo of fish — a "voyage of fish," as they say — 
and was starting for home. Fish were scarce that year 
and the skipper's good fortune was generally conceded, 
if not envied. Then an old fisherman spoke in: " Yes, 
he's got his voyage; but he's not clear of the Labrador 
yet." Nor did any demur at the implication. It is 
a coast of uncertainties. 

Winter's fish were " out of salt," and had to be 
taken care of without much delay. He would sail me 
for a day or two, however, and he and Richard and 
I started the 14th, after only a night at the house. We 
worked our way in a calm only to Un'sekat, that day, 
twelve miles, there to be windbound two days by a 
northwester. The house was unoccupied and wood 
scarce, but it was a comfortable period and I was glad 



1906 257 

to have rest. The bear skull came in for a cleaning 
and W. scraped the skin and staked it out. In the 
night some white foxes came nosing about and we 
had to cover the skin. The foxes would hardly go 
away from the light when we opened the door. They 
are tame, innocent things compared with other foxes. 

W. talked about his letting the boy go with me, a 
notable thing considering the coast feeling about the 
interior. He had always heard of me as a " kind 
man." If we had been gone over two weeks they 
might have feared lest something had happened to me, 
" so as to leave the boy uncared for." Without ac- 
cident to me they " felt sure the boy would be safe " 
— they were trusting enough ! 

By five the second day we parted, he for the north 
and I south by canoe. I meant to camp about seven 
miles on in a little rock-walled amphitheater open to 
the south, where there were Eskimo circles, and a 
little wood and water ; it was a favorite place of mine. 
There I did stop and boiled a kettle. The weather 
signs were peculiar; with the letting down of the north- 
wester it became warm, a faint air from south oc- 
casionally stirred the surface and quite a few stars 
showed through overhead. It seemed as though the 
thin overhead scurf might thicken and bring a little 
warm rain and south wind, but nothing more. But 
the peculiar feature was in the northeast. Behind 
level gray clouds showed a long background of an un- 
usual pale salmon color. In the northwest it would 
have stood for bright weather at least, the color was 
well enough, but there seemed something not quite 
usual about it, and the clouds of the sunset quarter 
had remained gray. Still it seemed better to be go- 



258 Labrador 

ing along in the warm, calm night than to be bound- 
ing about in a northwester, perhaps, next day. Not 
much good weather could be expected now, and what 
there was ought to be made the most of. So, well 
satisfied with the opportunity and my own diagnosis 
of things, I put out after supper on the ten-mile 
stretch to Tom Geer's. It was easy going, the oars 
worked well and silently. A wonderful phosphores- 
cence appeared with any stirring of the water. I have 
hardly seen the like. The whirls from the oars were 
very bright. If I had only known it here was one of 
the weather signs, as I knew later, of old John Lane, 
who used to say, " When the water burns look out 
for wind ! " 

Four or five miles on was a low, black point. I 
headed for it when near, with seemingly a third of 
a mile to go, pulling complacently along at a good 
rate and taking a sort of pride in the fireworks I was 
making in the water. The eddies from the oars were 
wonderfully bright, but faded fast. " A blaze, a 
nebula, a mist," " a blaze, a nebula, a mist " ..." a 
blaze, a nebula, a mist," I was repeating to myself at 
each stroke — things go in rhythm when one is row- 
ing alone. All at once there was a bang and I was on 
my back in the bottom of the canoe. I had rowed full 
speed into a square- faced rock and bounded back. I 
put my hand down instantly for water, thinking the 
bow must be shattered. None came, nor did later, 
though I tried for it now and then. Not the least 
damage was done. But one needs a bow-facing gear 
by night; there is no judging distances then. 

By the time I reached Geer's, about midnight, the 
sky had thickened and it was very dark. I did rather 



1906 259 

well to find the house, weathered white though it was. 
No one was there and I hesitated to break the lock — 
foolishly, for it was now sure to rain soon. I was 
sleepy, my mind was only half working; anyway, I 
started along and edged around the shore for Daniel's 
Rattle. There are several little irregular bays along, 
and not liking to get into the wide outside run among 
the islands I worked slowly around all these bays, in 
and out, so as not to miss the inside passage. There 
is a certain comfort in being on the mainland if one 
is driven upon shore. If I could have gone straight 
along past the little bays it would have taken much 
less time, but in such darkness there was no doing 
anything by landmarks. It was so dark that at the 
very oar's end I could not see the little white breakers 
against the boulders without straining my eyes. 

Somewhere about two o'clock big drops began to 
fall and the wind struck like a club from north. The 
night's work was over. Luckily I came in a few min- 
utes to a little rocky nook sheltering enough level moss 
ground for the canoe. There was just room between 
the boulders to get through to a most providential 
landing place. The rock shore had been steep, broken, 
and sharp edged for some distance. Under foot on 
the beach some white driftwood was visible; the first 
thing was to put three six-foot sticks up under the 
canoe before they were soaked, for some time there 
would need to be a fire, then I took care of the gun 
and baggage. I lay on a cross bar of the canoe, to 
keep it down, and wrapped in blanket, bearskin, and 
tent, got on fairly until morning. The rain blew 
under and things became pretty damp as the hours 
went on. At daylight it began to snow hard. It was 



260 Labrador 

a great storm. Twenty-six schooners along south- 
ward went down that night or were wrecked on the 
shore. Others than myself had not read rightly that 
salmon band. 

There was no having a fire ; the place, though some- 
what sheltered, was still too much exposed to the wind. 
Something had to be done, the damp and cold were 
creeping in. The air was just at freezing, the snow 
neither melting nor stiffening. On a ridge in sight 
were some trees and I made a sortie, but there was 
no dry wood there; the wind was strong, the long 
moss full of water. Back I went soon with a run; 
neither hands nor feet would stand the wet cold. 
Deerskin moccasins are as blotting paper. Diving 
under the bearskin I stayed a few hours more, eat- 
ing cold ration and wondering if it was to be a three- 
day blow. If so, I could not hold out there, and with- 
out the bearskin I should have been damaged as it was. 
Somewhere about one o'clock, I thought, the snow let 
up, and I got a little fire started under a tiny bush 
growing against a rock, in a little sort of hen's nest 
there. Soon there was a good fire going and I was 
steaming before it. The F. S. H. matchbox and the 
dry sticks had stood by, and the fire went with the 
first match. 

Daniel Noah's winter house was not more than two 
miles away, and though there was not much chance 
of his being there, a house, after all, is a house. It 
was still raining and blowing, but I could get about. 
In fully exposed places the wind was too strong to 
stand up in, so avoiding the open shore I struck off 
back through the woods, taking blanket, eatables and 
axe. Two swamps took me well to my waist and over 



1906 261 

my matchbox. Of course, as the luck was going, there 
was no one at Daniel's, nor was the house itself much 
of a find. The windows were partly out, the roof 
dripped all over, wood was scarce and wet, the old 
oven stove had holes in it. These last I patched with 
tin cans. An hour's steady firing and the miserable 
thing was scarcely warm, and I was chattering and 
wishing too late that I was back with driftwood pile 
and bearskin. Things looked bad, with another shiver- 
ing night on. I was overtrained from the inland trip 
and hadn't much internal heat. To my surprise, how- 
ever, after a second hour of firing the old stove glowed 
well, and I smoked a pipe after supper in comfort. 
There was a two by six dry spot in front of the stove, 
the only one about — the Noahs had to have one place 
to stand, I suppose. There I put down the blanket 
and as soon as my head was down went off like a 
trap, dead to all things. In an hour I waked ; the fire 
was out and my bones were fairly knocking together. 
One blanket at freezing, with wind blowing through 
the house, is not overmuch. I got up another fire, and 
in an hour it was out and I woke chattering again. 
This went on through the night, which was a good 
bit more wearing than the night before. 

The wind let down somewhat by two. In the even- 
ing it had been stronger than ever, a tremendous blow. 
The house itself was somewhat sheltered, but the wild 
racing of the water parallel with the shore in front 
was remarkable to hear. Getting back through the 
swamps in the morning was sloppy work. I was 
pretty sure the canoe would have been blown away by 
the strong wind of the evening and involuntarily 
balked and stood still just before the place came in 



262 Labrador 

sight; then with an effort kicked myself along. It 
was all right, and the sight was decidedly a lift. I 
tumbled down the steep moss slope, slammed the canoe 
into the water, threw my things in and hobbled off 
around the point. There was wind still, but not half 
what there had been, and with a little cockade of a 
spruce tree in the bow for a head sail, to prevent yaw- 
ing, I blew down for Davis Inlet at a good pace. I had 
been laid up thirty hours, with some wear, and but for 
the bearskin would have found it hard to get along 
at all the first night and morning. There is a moral 
about salmon streaks in the northeast and another as 
to summer clothes for freezing gales. The next year at 
Hopedale I saw that northeast salmon streak, men- 
tioned it, and gained prestige when a norther came on, 
as it did. 

Getting down to Davis Inlet the wider waters were 
lively. Squalls ran out from the points until I im- 
agined being translated bodily, and flakes of snow were 
blowing about. The bearskin made a good lap robe, 
tucked well up. There was something of an audience 
on the wharf, David Edmunds and Poy among them, 
the best hunters. When they asked questions I told 
them I started from Uu'sekat two nights ago, and tried 
to appear jaunty. But they saw the joke. Rather 
gravely, however, they took it. The ancient powers 
had been abroad those nights. Nor were the days just 
to their liking. David and Poy especially, high ones 
of the open, knew the way of snow northeasters, and 
when they carried up the little canoe from the beach 
they handled her with a certain regard, as for a horse 
that had made a good run. 

The next two days I sat in the house, glad to be 



1906 263 

there. Then Guy came back from Lane's bay with 
the Hudson's Bay Company schooner, which had been 
well mauled in the blow. Her bitts had pulled out, 
and the cable had to be carried around the mast. 
Finally an empty trap-boat was let down from a wind- 
ward point by a coil of rope that happened to be about 
and the men taken off. Meanwhile the mailboat came 
to Fanny's and went back south without me. Even 
if I had tried to keep on I doubt my catching her, 
for the weather continued too bad for small boat travel 
until after she had gone. 

The end of a trip needs little elaboration. A 
schooner came up the run and would take me to 
Fanny's. It was curious, when the three big, high- 
booted Newfoundlanders climbed out on the end of 
the post wharf, to see their worry about the dogs. 
They held back, eyed the dogs on the shore, got be- 
hind each other and argued as to who should go first. 
The dogs seemed quite In the humor of the situation. 
After all, a row of interested Eskimo dogs can be sug- 
gestive. The Newfoundlander's own dogs, a wellnigh 
vanished breed now, are wonderfully like themselves, 
mild, strong, enduring, a water breed courageous. 

Spracklin's fish had been washed, dried on his 
smooth rocks, and stowed aboard. For a week or two 
I wandered the island, somewhat with an eye for hares, 
which had, however, been well picked up by the foxes. 
One day, without gun or camera, I came close upon an 
arctic fox, snow-white and ready for winter ; he danced 
and postured long before his final departure. 

In calm afternoons geese dropped into the little 
ponds of the level tundra. I saw a line of them wing- 



264 Labrador 

ing in low one day, and threw myself flat in a sag 
while they came down two hundred and fifty yards 
away. One of them assumed guard while the others 
fed busily in the shallow pool. When the sentinel 
saw a flick as I turned over he spoke, a low quonk. 
Another took place beside him, and the two stood 
immovable, in double watch. The others splashed 
and reached under without reserve, but the two re- 
mained unrelaxed, statues in gray, to the end. There 
was no getting nearer, and I fired a little over. 

Snow buntings were blowing about the rocks every- 
where, the horned larks were gone, next would be 
snow and winter; the tremendous sea gales would 
sweep the island. On the hills of the mainland, to 
stay until spring, was snow from the great storm. 
The days were mild though cool. I knew they were 
the last free days in the north that I should ever have. 

The gray old island, with its ice-cap smoothed hills, 
is the very emblem of the unchanging and immovable. 
The sea bellows in vain upon its outer shores, against 
stern walls, into spouting fissures and caves, washing 
high and recoiling low, heaving betimes its tremendous 
ice — and the granite gives no sign. Yet where shall 
be found the enduring? These granite hills, even, are 
not at rest, although the eye might choose this, if earth 
held the unchanging, as the place to endure to the end. 
The whole region is rising. One steps or climbs across 
fissures that are fresh to the e3^e. Above, about the 
slopes of the hills, are pebbled beach lines where once 
was the sea. The weight of the old ice-cap, it may 
be, bore down the granite into the plastic mass of the 
planet. Slowly the hills are returning to their height, 
rising century by century from the dank sea depths. 



1906 265 

When the Norsemen came cod wandered the kelp 
where now the irok blooms and the mitten flower bends 
in the wind. Another day the islands may again be 
hills, the sea passages valleys with their lakes and 
streams; and again, in geologic time, may the ice-cap 
return, and the sea. 

But through my waiting days the Cape island lay 
untroubled in the autumn sunshine, a place where all 
was peace, where feet might saunter and mind might 
drift in the ways of their will. Ah, the sweetening 
air of that long pause before the storms of fall! For 
the last time these hills! We were gathering to go, 
the birds and I. But now peace, the sun-warmed 
moss, and the creatures that were. It was a time of 
reckoning for me, the turning over of what had been 
in my Labrador years, the stringing of beads that 
should always a little shine. Some of these had 
seemed clouded in the gathering, but in the reverie of 
those final days they were lighted all. Though never 
the world again were young, there had been days. 
Coast and inland — inland and coast. The early hard 
days on the mainland, the hills and valleys alone, the 
calm of the noble bays; their silence, broken only by 
the rise of wings; Tuh-pungiuk and Un'sekat and 
Opetik, and the strong opposing sea. The rolling 
barrens, the hills of the height of land. The tall, 
grave people there, the smiling strong ones here ; the 
aurora and the bergs and the innumerable insect foe. 
Long days and twilight nights, dark nights and stormy 
days ; the sunshine on the sea and the white-backed 
eiders' charge. 

So my string was strung. Always for me now 
would be the gray barrens, stretching far and on, al- 



266 Labrador 

ways the lakes and the lodge-smokes on their shores. 
Always would the people watch the deer, always stand 
silent at the shore, as friends would wave as they go ; 
the land be ever theirs. The light of the days that 
have been never quite fails the wilderness traveler; 
his feet may remain afar, but his mind returns 

Where the caribou are standing 
On the gilded hills of morning, 
Where the white moss meets the footstep 
And the way is long before. 







PUCKWAY 



CHAPTER IX 
1910 

To take one to a far country, year in and out, 
even though its people are well worth while, something 
of a mission is needed, an objective, and with its at- 
tainment the light which has led is apt to pale. With 
the passing of 1906 I felt that my shaft in the north 
had been shot, and so it proved. Revisiting, indeed, 
followed in 1907 and 1908, but only to the coast and 
nearer Assiwaban. From 1906 my days were bound. 
One trip which followed, and worth mentioning, 
though its days were not as the old days, had, after 
all, a motive, mainly geographical. 

Through the years from 1905 to 1910 I had thought 
I should like to work out the remaining part of the 
Indian route to the George, from Mistinipi on. Hav- 
ing done the knocking about the country I had, it seemed 
a good finish to put on the map the whole route to 
Indian House lake, the more so that it was doubtless 
the most feasible way into the interior anywhere from 
Hamilton Inlet up the rest of the coast. After Mrs. 
Hubbard's journey down the George, in 1905, the idea 
strengthened a little with me, as her survey for lati- 
tudes afforded a convenient check line to connect with. 
In truth, as the Indian route was said to swing to the 
northwest from Mistinipi narrows, I could not see, 
from the compass work I had already done, how we 

267 



268 Labrador 

could well agree in our positions. It seemed as if her 
mapping of Indian House lake would turn out a little 
too far south ; but it is only fair to her to say that the 
course of the Indian route continued more nearly west 
than I had reason to suppose, and my compass courses, 
which I finally did carry through in 19 lo, mapped out 
in remarkable agreement with Mrs. Hubbard's work. 

As elsewhere told, I had visited Mistinipi narrows, 
for the second time, in 1906, and on that occasion 
photographed the lake from a headland on the north 
side where the broad lake opens out, and which com- 
mands the lake well to the west end near the outlet. 
At that time the northward migration of the caribou 
was on^ and Ostinitsu and his band, to the number 
of about twenty-five all told, were spearing the deer 
at the east end of the narrows. The beach was strewn 
with carcasses, and the deer were still coming. 

An interval of four years had passed, when on the 
4th of August, 1910, our party of four reached 
Mistinipi, camping on a well shut-off little bay on the 
north side, a mile or two from the east end of the lake. 
We had only one canoe for the four of us, two of the 
party walking the shores, and the other two navigat- 
ing with the baggage. 

The plan worked well on the whole, with some in- 
conveniences, the arrangement lightening the portage 
work, and enabling very complete observations of the 
country by the foot party, which went over the hills 
and was able to see a good deal of the country and 
whatever signs there were of game and Indians. In 
all such travel, by the way, it is the man who goes 
afoot who really knows the country rather than the 
one who goes by canoe. The party was made up of 



1910 269 

Scoville Clark, with whom the trip was planned, and 
George P. Howe and D. G. McMillan, who fell in by- 
invitation on the way. 

The old deer crossing at the narrows showed still 
a lot of bleached horns, but the long windrow at the 
first camp of 1906, a little southward, had disappeared 
• — of course into the lake. The disposal counts as an 
offering to the powers that rule the chase ; without 
some such observance the surviving deer will be of- 
fended and avoid the hunters. Why the horns at the 
second camp were not likewise put into the lake I am 
not quite sure, but probably because the people were 
there so long a time that the spirits animating the 
horns had departed from them, after which eventuality 
they need not be held in respect. A long stay of the 
Indians almost surely occurred, for in 1906 they had a 
year's meat laid in when I left them, and would not 
have their usual motive for moving, that of following 
the deer, until at least the next summer. 

A strong deadfall had been built, probably for 
wolverenes, foxes, and the like, possibly for wolves 
too. A great lot of broken up marrowbones had ac- 
cumulated; they had been boiled and reboiled. What 
we saw may have represented the leg bones of a thou- 
sand deer. This of itself would show that the camp 
had been kept there a very long time. 

We followed the northern shore of the lake. There 
are three deep bays on that side leading toward passes 
in the hills east. In the second or third of these were 
the standing poles of a winter lodge, as if used for 
cross-country travel in the direction of Davis Inlet. 
The winter route to that place is much shorter than 
the summer one. 



270 Labrador 

A good many deer had summered over the country, 
though in a scattered way, but most of them had re- 
cently moved north. Hunting with the rifle among 
the hills had gone on at some time a year or two back, 
probably in 1907, and skulls and parts of skulls with 
horns attached were rather frequent beyond the nar- 
rows. Some of the horns were fine specimens, but 
all had been killed in the velvet, were now 'weathered 
white and porous and were as light as cork. There 
were a few bear and wolf tracks in the paths, not 
many, and the bears were small. 

The second day on Mistinipi McMillan and I, cir- 
cling far inland to flank the deep bays, missed the 
canoe and walked by it. The next thing we came to, 
as luck would have it, was a chain of impassable ponds 
running inland several miles, and these we had to go 
around, in one of the hottest days and the worst for 
flies that I remembered that year. We had no lunch- 
eon beyond a mouthful, and I, having footed it from 
the high portage nearly to the outlet of Mistinipi with- 
out any boating, at the same time making my portages 
with the others, had more than enough of it. Coming 
out on a point about the middle of the afternoon we 
made a strong smoke, putting on much moss, and be- 
fore long saw the canoe break around a point two or 
three miles behind and come on fast for the smoke. 
Curiously, just before the canoe really did appear I 
was perfectly sure I saw it in another place. It was 
some deer swimming along a far-away shore. 

The moral of the episode is, first that one ought 
never to separate from the commissary without at 
least two rations in hand, and some fishing tackle — 
a hook and line at least. We had a gun but very 




A MISTINIPI BEARSKIN 




FLESHL\G A DEERSKIN WITH DOUBLE LEG BONE OF A DEER 



1910 271 

few cartridges, and if really lost from the canoe party 
might have been a day or two without anything to eat. 
We did have matches. Another thing to remember is 
that if two parties are to meet on unknown ground it 
may become important for one or the other, on arriv- 
ing, to put up a signal visible from far. In this case 
we walkers were thrown back into the country two 
miles by deep, narrow bays, and though the canoe 
stopped at an old lodge which was visible enough to 
us at luncheon time, and the other men were lying in- 
side it, even McM.'s good eyes could not detect any- 
thing more than the white standing poles. If a tent 
or white blanket had been spread upon the poles we 
could have seen it in the sunshine five or six miles 
away. 

As it was we came rather near going through the 
experience of getting a raft together in a bad place 
for timber, with no axe, to get across the ponds. The 
most feasible way to do it was to adopt McAI.'s sug- 
gestion of tying the raft together with our under- 
clothes, a daunting proposition, for such were the flies 
that we could hardly get along with all our clothes on. 

Toward evening — this was the 6th — we came to 
a long chain of lakes leading northeast from the main 
lake ; they had to be crossed and all got into the canoe 
at once. It brought the weight up to about nine hun- 
dred pounds, and this in a fifty-six-pound canoe, only 
fifteen feet long. If the ratio of weight of vehicle 
to cargo was ever brought lower I should like to know 
where. 

There was some question where to look for the 
portage route at the end of the lake. My Indian maps 
of 1905 and 1906 were out of reach when I left home, 



272 Labrador 

and I could only remember that by various Indian ac- 
counts the route swung somewhat toward the north, 
and I had some doubt lest the chain of lakes referred 
to was the route. We talked it over and decided to 
look along the main lake for the outlet anyway. 
This proved right, and a short portage led to more 
lakes stretching off west; these were evidently our 
nearest way to the George whether the Indians went 
that way or not. There were, however, a good many 
Indian signs, poles, etc., — " Metukuf " in the vernacu- 
lar, about the outlet. 

The outlet is a smart rapid which we did not try 
to run. At the shore we were met by the most suffo- 
cating cloud of black flies I have ever seen. Eyes 
and nose were instantly full, and we had to make a 
smoke in as few seconds as possible. One can really 
work a good deal of actual destruction on flies of either 
kind by keeping a smart fire going. So it had been 
that day earlier when Howe and I made a mere wisp 
of a fire on a rock while waiting for the canoe to bring 
up my camera, left a mile behind. The water around 
the rock was calm, and we could see the singed mosqui- 
toes as they floated. In about half an hour they looked 
to count at least ten thousand, and there were visibly 
fewer about. Again, the day before this, I sat wait- 
ing some twenty minutes for McM. to return from 
hunting up some other left-behind thing, and amused 
myself killing off what mosquitoes I could as they lit 
on my hands and trousers, and by the time I was done 
they were quite thinned out. Still I was batting pretty 
fast for awhile. They will shower into a broad, hot 
fire after dark like a snowstorm when very thick. 
Heat is worse for them than smoke; one can lie close 



1910 273 

up to a wide, thin fire and be let alone. In a very- 
hot sun they are noticeably inert. 

This camp, at the foot of the short rapid, was on 
a smooth, velvety piece of ground, in no way sugges- 
tive of flies, but the place became referred to always 
afterward as Mosquito Point. There was some swale 
ground just beyond which may have accounted for 
the trouble. Other camps came to have names that 
were never bestowed as such; one was the "Windy" 
camp, another the " Comfort " camp, but the names 
began as common adjectives; we never set out to name 
anything. 

McM. caught a good namaycush on the fly in the 
eddy, and shot an old herring gull very handsomely 
next morning, across the river; both went into the 
kettle. When the morning came I begged for a Sun- 
day, a day off, for I had had more walking than the 
others, and we proceeded to take it easy, though the 
calm, beautiful morning was too good to waste. H. 
and I went up a symmetrical, smooth hill northeast 
and took observations. It looked eight or ten miles 
west a little north to the end of the second lake, the 
last one visible, and that was evidently our best course 
to the George. While we were about camp a tre- 
mendous wolf came to the shore across, looking as 
large as a moderate caribou. We were not sure for a 
moment but he was a caribou. He passed without 
hesitation into the strong water and swam toward us 
with head high. When forty or fifty yards away 
some one must have moved — we were somewhat con- 
spicuous from being above and on the sky line — for 
he turned and swam back. Reaching shore he paused 
not an instant, but took to a lope and disappeared. In 



274 Labrador 

the water he showed a grand, massive head and back, 
and swam with power. 

By luncheon time H., who had not walked much 
for three days, became uneasy to be off, and my good 
resolves to be prudent yielded. We made a small lake 
and a large one before camping, all four in the boat, 
and so disposed continued for a week or two, though 
low in the water and crowded, until we were back at 
the high portage where our other canoe was. The 
country became flat and less interesting to the west, 
and the lakes, called by the Indians Kanekautsh, mean- 
ing probably sand lake,^ or something of the sort, are 
shallow. The lakes are rather stony than sandy, 
however, save for a point where the lodges were gen- 
erally placed. There were many sets of standing 
poles. By midday, the 8th, the three lakes were be- 
hind. 

At the end of the last one we met a party of twenty 
Indians, most of whom I knew, going to the coast 
from Tshinutivish. They were Ostinitsu, Minowish, 
Puckway, my old but doubtful friend, young Edward, 
of 1906 history, and three or four women and girls. 
They met us with civility, but we had little to enter- 
tain them with, tobacco or tea, and I think they were 
disappointed. At the post we had been told that they 
were all near the coast, and we had taken nothing for 
them. Off they went, in an hour or so, we going the 
other way on foot with a man and boy who were re- 

1 Various Indians from other regions have seen no other mean- 
ing in the name, though not at all sure of this one. I have 
thought myself it might follow Kaneiapishkau, rocky point lake, 
and Neikupau, brush point, but a southern Indian or two I have 
asked about it have doubted this. Ne, or in English sounds nay, 
is a point. 




NIJWA, DRESSED WHOLLY IN CARIBOU SKINS 



1910 275 

turning to Tshinutivish, six or seven miles northwest- 
erly. Our guide was not enthusiastic about our go- 
ing along, though as a matter of course we would 
naturally pass his place when we moved camp. But 
as the river was hard to travel, having, as various 
Indians had explained, many rapids, we decided merely 
to make an afternoon walk to Tshinutivish and back 
and then return to the coast. 

Our guide took us a mile west to a rocky hill prom- 
ontory and pointed out Tshinutivish Hill, still some 
miles away. The word means little-long-brain, and 
has a fair basis of resemblance. When the man 
started off I told him we would go too. He took it 
well enough, but the walk was a ludicrous affair. Our 
Indian, I imagine, took his course with the idea of 
looking for game on his way, or perhaps it was his 
sense of humor that inspired him ; at any rate, he led 
through more swamps and over more bad ground gen- 
erally than we had seen for a long time. He had 
given me, for one, a pretty sharp walk to the lookout 
hill, though I kept up well that far. Now, with his 
long legs, he made a spectacle of all of us in the 
swamps and bushes. H., very near sighted, had 
broken his only pair of glasses, and wearing a net 
too could not see the ground, and was soon out of 
sight behind. We were in a long procession. Now 
and then I called to the man not to hurry, that the 
doctor could not see; then he would smile gently and 
pause a little. He stepped slowly with his thin legs 
and without effort, but at no time were we really in 
the running at all. The young boy had no trouble 
keeping up, but circled about like a puppy. Showers 
came, one long and effective, and we were wet and done 



276 Labrador 

up by the time we got to the river. We were loaded, 
all, into a fine canvas canoe, myself distinguished by 
being permitted one of the two paddles, and were 
soon across the Tshinutivish estuary. 

Several persons came down from the lodges, one 
a barefooted man of some presence, in red leggings. 
Of course my Indian words failed, as they generally 
do with Naskapi I have not talked with before. I 
tried to say we wanted to sleep there. The word was 
right enough, nipan it is in at least three kindred dia- 
lects, but here it looked as if it meant not to sleep, but 
to get married. There was a roar from the men, and 
disturbance, with some scattering, among the women. 
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. 

Most of the people drifted back to the lodges. We 
were wet and getting cold. Finally I got at the older 
man, explained that we could not go back that night 
and wanted shelter. He pointed to his lodge and said 
we could go there. Presently we went in. It was a 
matter of course, anyway, I imagine. The lodge was 
large, of near fifty poles, with seven or eight persons 
inside, mostly women and children. It would have 
held twenty persons, I should say, sleeping as they do, 
like spokes of a wheel, with feet to the fire in the 
middle. One side of the tent was given to us visitors. 
We took off more or less of our wet things and hung 
them to dry. 

Presently a white cloth went down in front of us, 
the size of a towel, and a few ordinary glazed ware 
dishes, followed in time by some extremely good 
boiled whitefish. Dried caribou meat, equally good, 
was handed about, and tea. After some rummaging 
a little salt was found, a thimbleful or two; they do 



1910 277 

not eat it themselves as a habit. Our host tried to 
talk, but I could not make much of it and he gave up 
disgusted. He was mainly concerned about the deer 
migration. I was sorry to have to tell him that the 
deer seemed scattered and not very many. 

Their outlook for the winter seemed bad; the 
scaffolds were low. All the men looked hard worked, 
the- women, on the other hand, fuller than when I saw 
them at Mistinipi in 1906. So it goes, one side of the 
house or the other is always having the worst of it. 
In 1906 the men were fat and the women thin and 
overworked upon the abundant and easily got meat 
and skins of the migration. 

After supper the neighbors came in, mostly women 
whose men had gone to the shore. My old acquain- 
tances of 1906, every one, brought presents of meat 
and skins and moccasins, nor had they lost their pleas- 
ing manners I remembered. We could only thank 
them then, having brought nothing from our camp. 

What went on in the course of the evening brought 
to us as real a phase of the primitive life as I had seen. 
While we were eating the hostess was roasting large 
whitefish for the others, on spits run through them 
lengthwise. They were leaned at an effective angle 
over the fire. The children meanwhile chewed as they 
would at enviable smoked deer meat, such as only 
those of the life know. There was no vegetable food; 
whitefish and dried deer meat were all. 

We were given skins and blankets for the night. 
The puckered deerskins of the lodge dripped a little as 
it came on to rain, and I had to v/riggle al^out for a 
dry place. Some one kept a little fire, putting on 
wood when necessary, and we were wholly comfort- 



278 Labrador 

able. Breakfast was of dried meat boiled. By the 
time it was done with the sun came out and we wan- 
dered about the place. 

^ Howe particularly pleased the old women, though 
nothing could be said between them. McMillan, with 
his gift for boys, had his following of them there as 
at home, Clark wandered at large, and helped me 
change films. On my part, I used the camera as best 
I could. The tension of the time, with forty Nas- 
kapi about, was plain upon most of our unaccustomed 
party; I felt it myself, and after I was pretty well 
around with the kodak, one of my friends, and of great 
Eskimo experience at that, came to me and said with 
growing intensity, " Now we've stayed over night and 
we've seen everything, you've got your photographs — 
let's go!" 

I photographed one quiet, oldish man, using my 
spectacles to see the focusing scale with. He reached 
out apologetically for them and tried them on the cloth 
of my sleeve. His face brightened to see so well, and 
he handed them back a little wistfully. I explained 
that they were all I had. Later I remembered that 
there were more in my kit at camp, and on leaving 
him to step into the canoe I pulled them out of my 
pocket and handed them to him. I like to remember 
his look. A beggarly gift in a way, yet something 
after all for one whose eyes have failed. 

Almost at once came running good old Nijwa, to 
whom on old scores I owed more than any mere spec- 
tacles, came running for a pair too, but I had to tell 

1 Dr. Howe took a turn through the camp professionally, for 
which the Indians expressed appreciation in reporting our visit 
at Chimo afterward. 




A FOOD SCAFFOLD 




CRUSHED MARROWBONES FROM PERHAPS A THOUSAND 

DEER 



1910 279 

her I had no more. In truth, I ought to have sent 
my last pair back to her from our camp. 

We Avere soon off. All the people gathered at the 
shore and stood silent as we started, waving as we 
made the distance, as is their custom to guests. Our 
host of the night was with us, also our guide of yes- 
terday, and two boys, their sons. I had told them 
that if they would come over I would give them some 
silver T had. 

Tshinutivish is a few miles down from the head 
of Miishauau nipi, Barren Ground lake. There was 
an Hudson's Bay Company post in the little estuary 
under the hill at one time, but the expense of supply- 
ing it was too great, the river below being very hard 
to ascend. It has no important falls, but a tremen- 
dous incline leading down a thousand feet or more. 
John McLean brought up a heavy boat about 1840, 
and his discovery of the Grand Falls was made from 
Chimo by way of this lake. Erlandson, prior to Mc- 
Lean, doubtless knew it well. Mrs. Hubbard passed 
it in 1905, Dillon Wallace later the same year. 

The Kanekautsh lakes we had traversed were doubt- 
less known to the people of the former post, but it is 
not likely that they went far east, and our journey 
was almost certainly the first that has been made by 
whites from the coast to the George itself, certainly 
the first of which there is record. The best of the 
country, however, is the belt explored by Ouackenbush 
and myself along the height of land. With its beau- 
tiful white moss hills and fine lakes it is one of the 
best wild places left anywhere. But for the mosqui- 
toes it would be a rare place in which to travel, as has . 
been elsewhere intimated ; indeed, but for their most 



280 Labrador 

effective guardianship of the shore the inland would 
doubtless have been explored long ago. As it is, a 
warm weather trip there merely for pleasure, as one 
ordinarily goes to wild places, is not worth while. 

It was on the 9th of August we left Tshinutivish, 
a sunny, cool day. The Indians took us always over 
'high, firm ground, if a little roundabout, consulting 
now and then how they would better go, and keeping 
us well out of swamps and calm fly pockets. The 
two men, who may have been brothers, talked with a 
pleasant rather rapid utterance much of the way. 
They were discussing the deer situation, with them all 
in all, and were anxious. The season was well on and 
there was no sign of the deer coming together. I 
would have given much to be able to understand all 
they said; the epic of the life was in it. There were 
a good many deer, the country over, but by one of 
their mysterious impulses they might all vanish and 
go a hundred or two miles as if in some wireless way 
the word had been passed among them. The people 
had little food ahead. By the turn of the year the fish 
would go dormant in deep water and the desolate snow 
barrens would be lifeless. They could keep to the east 
side of the country and escape the worst by falling 
upon the trading posts, but the country on that side 
was empty of deer now, and had not had many since 
1903. ]\Ioreover, for the whole population to come 
upon outside resources would be a strain on the usual 
coast supply of provisions. On that side of the coun- 
try there was little fur, moreover, to pay for their 
food. Grave questions these, and the lives of many, 
women and children and men, depended on the judg- 
ment of a few older heads. No wonder they make 



1910 281 

their offerings to the powers that can either withhold 
the deer entirely or send them in thousands to cover 
the hills ! 

As we walked and talked a doe and fawn took our 
track somewhere behind, and, caribou fashion, 
followed us along not far back, stepping high and 
lightly and beautiful in the sunshine, starting and stop- 
ping ready to flee. When they saw us turn and look 
they halted, and when an Indian went back for a shot 
they took themselves safely away. 

Arrived at the lake, we got out our kit and cooked 
for all. The Indians had cooked for us, now we 
cooked for them. Our good pemmican they appreci- 
ated, and the bread and tea. We were all leisurely, 
there was time and sunshine, and the day was ours. 
When the meal was over I shook out my bags of odds 
and ends and found the silver. They looked it over, 
talked, and were cheerful. From inside their coats, 
after all seemed done, they pulled out little fawn skins 
for us, and I had to scrape together the last few dimes 
to meet the occasion. Then casually and without 
words they rose and strolled away. I set my camera 
scale and waited for their figures to rise upon the hori- 
zon. Arriving there, each Indian mounted one of the 
large boulders which stood sharp against the sky and 
all waved high their long arms for a little. We waved 
in return and they vanished. 

There was nothing more for us at Kanekautsh, and 
we departed, still four in the small canoe. We were 
anxious to be over the large lakes ; the bays were deep, 
the country flat and, scrubby and not very good to 
travel afoot. There was some forty miles of large- 
water navigation, broken by three short portages, to 



282 Labrador 

the head of Mistinipi. At the east end of the first 
lake, McM. and I took a couple of time-sights for 
longitude, the most valuable sights of the trip. Howe 
had taken two double altitudes at Mosquito Point on 
the 7th, but the meridian one was doubtful. A pan 
of bacon fat is not bad for a horizon when the sun 
is warm enough to keep it fluid, but there was air 
enough stirring to riffle its surface whenever the job 
came to a contact. The worst was mosquitoes, drop- 
ping into the pan in droves and descending upon H.'s 
succulent face and hands whenever the breeze let up. 

The " red sun " was plain enough to catch, com- 
ing direct, but the reflected one through the green glass 
was hard to find, and between wind and flies the ob- 
servation was doubtful. It was an inhuman spectacle 
— H., the sensitive one of us to flies, jumping with 
torture, but holding himself desperately to the sacrifice, 
looking to the last for a green sun in a frying pan! 

At Kanekautsh the time-sights were quickly made, 
and we kept on up the large lake until the sun was 
well under. Then a curious episode occurred. 
Ahead less than a mile a canoe, which we took for 
one of Ostinitsu's, or possibly of strange Indians, 
came around a point and made directly our way, pres- 
ently swinging so as to cross our course a quarter of 
a mile ahead, but going steadily and fast. We could 
see no paddles in the underlight, and some one ap- 
peared to be standing. Then we saw that it was nearer 
than it had seemed and that there was something 
wrong, and in truth weird about it. Whatever the 
manifestation was it paid no attention to us. By this 
time we were all mystified and at a loss. Once it 
was by we turned in chase, and before long saw that 



1910 283 

it was simply a huge pair of antlers carried by a stag 
low down in the water. Soon our four paddles over- 
hauled him, and as we needed meat McMillan, in the 
bow, killed him neatly near the shore. 

The illusion of a canoe, and then the impression of 
something outside one's daylight experience, had been 
remarkably definite and identical with us all. If the 
apparition had passed behind a point in the first eight 
or ten minutes we should always have counted it a 
canoe, after that heaven knows what. We should have 
had something to argue about for all time. 

This was the only large game shot during the trip. 
We were fresh meat hungry. The liver bore our first 
onslaught; it would not do to say how many pounds 
we ate before noon next day, when we started on 
again. The liver cannot well be bettered in summer, 
however in winter, and even then the deer's barren 
ground diet of starchy white moss may maintain its 
quality. In southern regions the deer kind change 
wholly as the snow deepens, the liver becomes blue, 
knurly, and bad to eat. So even with the solid meat 
then, that of the woodland caribou at least becoming 
hard and black after long feeding on the old-men's 
beards of tree moss ; the flesh then smells of fermented 
moss, and does not keep well ; even pickled it spoils 
soon unless the bones are taken out. 

For a few days our meat improved, until the solid, 
thick collops that we roasted on sticks, each for him- 
self, seemed beyond anything we had ever fallen upon. 
Clark and I had them without salt, Indian fashion, 
and were sure they were best that way. With time 
to lie about and give one's self up to the business of di- 
gestion there seems no limit to the amount one can 



284 Labrador 

eat and the frequency with which one can turn to it 
again. But one cannot play anaconda and do hard 
traveling at the same time. When steady on the road 
one needs more concentrated food, not much of it at 
a time, and better if what there is of it is comparatively 
indigestible. 

That year we had good fortune on sea, land, and 
lakes. From Turnavik, where the Invermore put us 
out in disappointment at her untimely turning back, 
to the foot of Kanekautsh, whatever wind blew was 
with us. Now, going eastward again, we had no head 
wind of account all the way to Davis Inlet, near two 
hundred miles. Never was such persistent luck. 
Still, with the little canoe, it was kittle work crossing 
large bays. Mostly we followed far in and around, 
for the boat was like a log, and the shorter waves 
passed from end to end without lifting her. Some- 
times the temptation to cut across a bay was too much, 
and then, sometimes, we needed all our little free- 
board, all. If a strong push of wind had followed us 
a mile we would have filled. There was little or no 
room to bail. Howe and Clark sat on the bottom 
with light packs actually laid upon their legs. What 
they would have done if things had gone wrong is 
not too easy to see. I was uneasy for myself at times, 
though high up at the steering paddle. 

A secondary object of the trip, after the carrying 
the Tshinutivish route through, was to look up the' 
large lake on the head of Mistastin. I thought we 
could find it without much trouble, from what Indians 
had told me. We left the second lake east of the 
height of land August 13th, going afoot for the high- 
est hill in sight, some six or eight miles away and 



1910 285 

somewhat west of south. There had been some dis- 
cussion as to having time enough. The rest of the 
party feared missing their October engagements. I 
demurred, suggested their keeping on to the coast, and 
urged them to do so, but to leave me the small canoe 
at the high portage to get out with ; it was only twenty 
miles away. Finally they decided to stay, and we 
started for Mistastin with two or three days' supplies. 
It was about two o'clock in the afternoon. 

By five or six we reached the far hill, and Mistastin, 
a large spreading lake, was plainly visible off to the 
south. We made a sky camp, with good northern 
lights, in a wooded valley on toward the lake. It was 
nearer to a non-mosquito night than any other we had 
on the plateau save at Tshinutivish. The way on to 
the lake was poor, along a rough valley side, with 
flies and bushes, and only occasional deer paths to 
follow. Near the lake McM. concluded to take a 
half day off, and the rest of us kept on three or four 
miles to a remarkable trap headland where I had been 
told the old-time Indians got their arrow-head material. 
There was some good travel, alternating with half- 
swampy levels, where grew larch, spruce, and alders, 
and we slopped through two barely passable streams. 
At the headland Clark's moccasins went through. 
Howe and I kept on up the hill. The southwest side 
was of organ-pipe basalt, with a fine, even talus slope 
below, the northeast corner a flintish-looking, light- 
colored trap, in small, flat slabs. Service berries were 
plenty on top and bear tracks to match. The western 
foot of the hill is skirted by a game trail, where the 
deer have to go in flanking the west end of the lake. 
After two hours of exploration we returned to Clark 



286 Labrador 

and started back north. I held the way unnecessarily 
over swampy ground east of our outgoing track, and 
carelessly came out quite a way east of the baggage. 
Turning westerly, Clark soon sighted McM. on a far 
sky line, concerned about us, for it was getting dark. 

We made a mile or so north and camped open to 
the sky again, on the very crest of the country, the 
wide moss hills of the height of land. The northern 
lights were remarkable. They shifted over us for 
hours in bands and curtains, looking marvelously near. 
I venture that one of the great festoons hung within 
three or four hundred feet of us. 

Westerly from Mistastin the country is low, and in 
places unusually well timbered with straight larch and 
spruce. One could build canoes and rafts at will. 
The great flow down Mistastin valley anciently is ac- 
counted for by this wide depression at its head. The 
headland we had visited is the striking remnant of a 
great erupted dike which has been torn through from 
west. I had seen porous gray basalt, probably from 
this dike, about the Assiwaban forks for years with- 
out knowing its source. The Mistastin river takes the 
course of a great Z from the lake to the Assiwaban, 
with a deep canon and high falls. The lake itself 
is probably at least twelve miles long and four or five 
wide, with bold shores everywhere save at the west 
end. A high, long island, looking eruptive, rises in 
the west half, the rest of the lake being open. It is 
the finest piece of water I have seen in the north- 
east, though not really very large ; nothing of it would 
seem to have been known before. 

We took a straightish course back, making one high 
lift but escaping many ridge-crossings, and saving 




AT DAVIS INLET 




A DEAD FALL, MISTINIPI, 1910 



1910 287 

some actual distance over our outward trip. But I, 
for one, was tired; the last few miles, though with 
only a moderate pack, dragged a good deal. I had 
missed a good deal of sleep when the others were doing 
well. Once back at our base camp I slumped down 
limp while the others cooked caribou. We all had a 
long afternoon of lying about. 

Next day we were off for the coast, all in tune and 
surprisingly springy. Caribou collops had picked us 
up. We passed several ponds quickly, half running 
the portages. At the kettle-boiling on a little pond 
along came Ostinitsu, with two other Indians and a 
boy; the rest of his party had taken a more westerly 
route. The little party spent an hour with us and were 
off west. At dark we were well toward the high 
portage. 

We had cached two pieces of bacon near the top of 
the portage, one in a tree and the other in a cold pond, 
and were interested to see what had happened to them. 
The weather had been far from cold, and after the 
sixteen days' absence we had not much hope of the 
water bacon. Indeed it was slimy and pretty bad, 
though the inner part would have done at a pinch. 
The outside would have needed real starvation for a 
sauce. The tree bacon, which had escaped enemies 
from above and below, seemed to have actually 
sweetened in the cool, clean air, and was rather im- 
proved. 

The Natua-ashu gave us a cuffing, a northwester 
came on as we started in. We kept close to the north 
shore for safety, but the small canoe Clark and I had 
required bailing. We held on, riding for a fall ; there 
was little to risk at this stage of the trip. At the 



288 Labrador 

very last point was a little hook bight beyond which we 
would be safe. I had not cared to go out around 
far, with our low freeboard, and was keeping well in, 
when in the bight three large waves came; if there 
were more behind, things would go hard. We tried 
to turn the point, a mistake — I should rather have 
driven straight ashore. A squall kept the waves com- 
ing, actually broaching the larger canoe full into the 
trough, without filling her, however. Our fate was 
different, the boat filled, turned over instantly, and 
we had to swim for it. There was no trouble get- 
ting ashore, but the rifle and other sinkable kit went 
down in eight or nine feet of water. 

There was plenty of driftwood behind the lee of 
some alders, and we spent the rest of the day there, 
from ten o'clock, drying out and resting. In the 
calm of the next morning we hooked up the derelict 
stuff. What a hook would not catch a wire snare on a 
stick did. 

Our trap boat, bought from Captain Bartlett at 
Turnavik, was waiting at Winter's, and in two days 
we worked our way to Geer's. The boat was slow 
and heavy, albeit known to us as the "Lady Maud," 
but we came to a sort of affection for her. For a few 
'hours getting to Geer's place we had a head wind, the 
only one of that miraculously wind-favored trip. 

Tom Geer and his wife helped us to Davis Inlet, 
fifteen miles, and showed us what intimate knowledge 
of tides would do. We rowed or paddled, all six of 
us, till the heavy craft moved like a thing of life; 
currents and a final wind did more, and we made port 
in a wonderfully short time. On our own resources 
we might have taken a day or more. 



1910 289 

We were glad to rest two or three days In the will- 
ing hands of Mr. Johnson, the new agent, who helped 
us on later. We had brought some souvenirs from 
the Indian camp, but in experienced hands at the post 
they were soon boiled out. (Mem.: Some sulpho- 
napthol for insects is worth having along to save boil- 
ing one's woolens.) Wind and rain put us ashore a 
night in Flowers' bay, and a northwester following, a 
cracking wind, made us glad to change from the open 
boat to a schooner in Windy Tickle. We caught the 
Stella Maris at Hopedale by a scratch, but not too late 
to dine with the Lenzes at the Mission. 

The 1910 trip was a fair success. The strong party, 
perhaps physically the most capable, and without pro- 
fessional packers the best equipped of any that has 
gone into the peninsula, was very effective and hard 
to stop. We did not work very long days, though 
taking it by and large all had work enough, and 
every one at one time or another showed signs of 
wear. 

On coming out we were surprised to learn that an 
expedition had gone into the country from Nain at 
about the time we started in by the Assiwaban. The 
travelers were Mr. Hesketh Prichard and Mr. Hardie, 
with their guide, Porter. They paralleled our route 
at a distance from it of some twenty miles, reaching 
the Barren Ground Lake ten days after we did. They 
saw no Indians. The ground they traversed is some- 
what higher and more rocky than along the Assiwaban, 
with fewer lakes, and withal should be better suited 
to a foot trip. Much of this country was more or less 
distantly viewed by one and another of us in 1904 and 



290 Labrador 

1905, from elevations along our way, in particular 
from the hills about Mistinipi. 

In 191 1 the Indian country was unvexed by any 
white person, so far as I can learn. McMillan made 
a long canoe trip on the coast, but did not go inland. 
At Davis Inlet he saw one or two of old E.'s family 
and a chance Naskapi. After all, the people had man- 
aged to pull through the winter, and in the spring had 
a great migration at Mistinipi. They speared a thou- 
sand deer. 

Now, in November, the snow is over the country, 
there is meat for the winter, and the lodge life at its 
best is going on in the sheltered bays. In such times 
of plenty the Indian life is peculiarly attractive, per- 
haps more so than the life of any other hunter race 
that survives on earth. The people are lords over their 
fine country, asking little favor, ever, save that the 
deer may come in their time. It was one of the not- 
able privileges of my wilderness days to have the best 
of their country to myself for some years, unexplored 
as it was, and even more to me was the relation with 
the people themselves. 

They are all east of the George now; all that I know 
who are living. Old Ostinitsu is there surely, for he 
is tough ; and Nahpayo, who "sees far," with his pretty 
young wife. Pakuun-noh, a good man, is gone; he is 
hunting in an easier world now. His wife is with 
the others; her son. Fox-boy, with his father's and 
mother's gentleness, must be getting a large boy now. 
Puckway, is there, with his friendly eyes, Ashimagan- 
ish, Kamoques, Pi-a-shun-a-hwao, and straight old 
Nijwa who has outlived her looks. 

They are all there, where the nights are already 




TSHINUTIVISH 



1910 291 

long, and the snow flashes keen to the northern lights. 
There is plenty now, the children's faces are round; 
there is plenty for the burnt offerings, always of the 
best — and the people do not forget. There is plenty 
to offer Ki-way-tin-o-shuh, the god of the Northwind 
and Snow, in these days of his growing power. Now 
are the Maquish, the Little People, hidden in their 
rocks, now are the Under-water People sleeping the 
winter away. The wire snowshoes come and go, the 
tracks of the long tapakun ribbon the winter ways. 
Little the people are asking. Their country still is 
theirs, and the deer; and long may they so remain. 



CHAPTER X 

MICE 

The part played by that humble creature, one might 
easily say humble nuisance, the mouse, in the economy 
of barren ground life, has been touched upon in pre- 
vious pages. With the caplin of the coast waters, and 
the rabbit, the varying hare of the forested North, 
creatures existing mainly to feed their predatory super- 
iors, the mouse has an importance quite beyond its 
apparent insignificance. 

The mouse of the barrens is rather square built, 
about the size of a common field mouse, with a short- 
ish, stumpy tail. Like the rabbit it increases in num- 
bers through a term of years and suddenly disappears. 
The rabbits at least are known to die off from a dis- 
ease like anthrax. In years of their scarcity districts 
where there are no lakes to provide a fish supply are not 
hunted by the Indians, who seek other grounds. In 
these years the lynx, the chief rabbit hunter of all, is 
said not to breed. The hardship of the rabbit's ab- 
sence is felt also by the martens, whose Indian name, 
by the way, is wapistan, "rabbit-hunter," as well as by 
the birds of prey and other hunting creatures. 

In like manner the caplin governs the movements of 
the cod, and probably certain of the whales. It has 
been held that the recent destruction of whales from 
the stations at Hawk Harbor and Cape Charles, on the 

292 



Mice 293 

Labrador, has affected the cod fishing through the 
capHn as intermediary. The idea is that the whales 
drive the capHn inshore, and the cod follow in where 
they can be caught. Now, with the thinning out of 
the whales, it is thought that the caplin and cod tend 
to remain out at sea where they cannot be reached. 
On this theory, I have been told, whaling has been re- 
stricted in certain Norwegian waters, and similar legis- 
lation has been suggested for Labrador. 

Perhaps as many creatures depend upon mice as 
upon either rabbit or caplin, although people, indeed, 
rarely eat them. Indirectly they may play as import- 
ant a part in the concerns of the Indians as the rabbit 
itself; and this although, in the fur countries at least, 
one may well touch his hat with respect when the name 
of the Indians' "Little White One" is mentioned. 

In 1903, my first year in the country, mice were 
not noticeably plenty. Caribou had been abundant 
through the winter, by early July passing north in large 
numbers close to the coast. There were some falcons 
about, the splendid light-colored gyrfalcons, besides 
rough-legged hawks, dark and almost equally fierce. 
Both kinds breed in cliffs about the islands. I saw 
few ptarmigan, the one with chicks at Jim Lane's be- 
ing all I remember; however, I spent little time inland 
that year. Foxes, the most important fur game, were 
fairly plenty. 

By 1904 mice were distanctly abundant. Hawks 
were more numerous, the white ones shrilling from 
many cliffs as we approached their nests. It was that 
year, I think, perhaps the next, that foxes were noted 
by the shore people as being scattered and shy ; they 
would not take bait. As to the trout up river I do 



294 Labrador 

not remember, but they probably made something of 
their chance at the mice. If, however, the mice take 
to the water mainly when migrating, the trout may not 
have had many that year. 

Ptarmigan were fairly numerous. The wolverene 
we shot was full of mice. There were no caribou to 
speak of. We saw a good many wolf tracks, chiefly 
along the river banks, where mice are apt to be, but 
heard no wolves at night. There were some hawks 
and a few owls all the way inland. 

The next year, 1905, was the culminating year of 
the mice. Sometimes two at a time could be seen in 
the daylight. Low twigs and all small growth were 
riddled by them. There was a tattered aspect about 
the moss and ground in many places not quite pleasant 
to see. We saw few mice in the river, but perhaps 
they swam nights. Falcons had increased visibly, 
nesting on most cliffs from Cape Harrigan to Misti- 
nipi, a hundred and fifty miles distance. Owls were 
not many, but had increased somewhat; we saw only 
one snowy owl. All trout of more than a half pound 
had mice inside. Ptarmigan were very plenty, and the 
wolves — we may have seen the tracks of two hundred 
— were silent still. The bear of the trip was full of 
mice. He was very fat, as doubtless the other preda- 
tory animals and birds were. They were in much the 
situation of some of us Vermont children one year 
when blackberries were unusually thick; the bushes 
were hanging with them, and all we had to do was to 
walk up to them hands down and "eat with our 
mouths." Caribou were still scarce, even on George 
River, and foxes plenty. 

In the spring of 1906 the mice disappeared with the 



Mice 295 

snow. The local impression was that they moved 
away at these times, but such is almost always the 
prevailing belief, whether as to buffalo, caribou, or 
fish, in fact any sort of game. It is possible that they 
did move, but if so one ought to hear of their reappear- 
ing somewhere occasionally in large numbers, and so 
far as I learn this is not their way. 

With the vanishing of the mice the change in the 
visible life of the country was remarkable. The fal- 
con clififs were deserted, coast and inland. Where the 
birds had gone none could say. They had seemed to 
belong to the country. We felt the absence of their 
superb flights and cries. 

In the trout reaches of the Assiwaban fish were 
numerous, but they were living on flies now, with 
what minnows they could get, and were no longer 
mousey, but sweet and good. No owls appeared; 
there had, however, never been very many. Our bear 
of the year was living on berries, and did not smell 
beary or greasy when we skinned him; the meat was 
singularly sweet and well flavored. 

Ptarmigan were all but wanting, old birds and 
young. It is fair to suppose that in previous years 
they were let alone by their natural enemies in the 
presence of the superabundant mouse supply, and 
were enabled to increase to their unusual number of 
1905. Their enemies — birds, wolves, foxes, wolver- 
enes and what not, increased also. For two or three 
years they had had only to sit down and eat. Now, 
in a plight with the disappearance of the mice, they 
harried the ptarmigan to nearly the last egg and 
feather. We missed their evening crowing in the 
scrub. 



296 Labrador 

The refuse of the deer crossing at Mistinipi gathered 
many of the animals and the ravens. Sixty wolver- 
ene skins came to Davis Inlet post that year, where 
eight or ten would come ordinarily. 

For the first time we heard the wolves nights, a far, 
high-pitched howl — their hunting cry. I suppose it 
is for the ears of the caribou. Uneasy, they move, a 
track is left for the wolf to find, and sooner or later 
the chase is on. There had been no need of thus stir- 
ring^ up the game from a distance in the mouse hunt. 

Whether the caribou may not have kept out of the 
country because the mice were in possession is a ques- 
tion. The ravelled moss and other leavings of the 
mice were a little unpleasant to our eyes, perhaps also 
to the sensitive nose and taste of the caribou, as sheep 
ground is to the larger grazing animals. I have long 
suspected that the caribou did not care to feed along 
with the mice. It is possible, however, that being let 
alone by the wolves in the south while the latter were 
sitting among the mice in the north, the caribou merely 
stayed passively where they were. The absence of 
Indians in the southern part of the deer range would 
also support the idea that their being undisturbed 
had to do with their staying there. Once the wolves 
found themselves upon the hard times of early 1906 
they may have sought the caribou and stirred them to 
move. They certainly did move, as the twelve or fif- 
teen hundred carcasses at Mistinipi that year went to 
show. 

The bearing of the mouse situation on the human 
interests of the region is easy to see. It affected all 
the game, food game and fur. The abundance of 
mice tended to build up the ptarmigan, which are of 



Mice 297 

vital importance in the winter living of the Indians 
through the whole forested area to the Gulf. Likewise 
it built up the caribou herd by providing easier game 
than they for the wolves. 

The departure of the mice did the reverse, reducing 
the deer and ptarmigan, but it may have brought the 
deer migration as suggested, giving at any rate an easy 
year to the hard-pressed Indians of the George. At 
last they had good food and new clothes and lodges, in 
all of which necessaries they had gone very low. They 
killed too many deer at Mistinipi, still very many 
passed south again the next year. There have been 
deer in the country ever since, with not many mice. 

All in all it is hard to imagine any other natural 
change which would have affected the fortunes, some- 
times the fate, of all the other creatures of the penin- 
sula, from man to fish, as did the coming and going 
of the mice during the years from 1903 to 1906. Only 
fire could have done the like. Nor were the shore 
people by any means untouched. All their land game 
came and went, was plenty or wanting, shy or easily 
taken, according to the supply of mice. London and 
St. Petersburg, easily, were affected through their 
great fur trade. 

It would be farfetched to speculate seriously as to 
the influence of our multitudinous little rodent upon 
the fish and whales of the deep sea, even if there were 
any such thing as tracing these matters to their final 
end. A run of mice, nevertheless, may make itself 
felt quite beyond adjacent sea waters. The fish we 
are concerned with all feed at much the same sea table 
— the salmon and sea trout that visit the inland, the 
cod and the whales that do not. Their business. 



298 Labrador 

chiefly, is eating, and they are more or less in competi- 
tion. What one gets another does not. The well- 
being of the anadromous fish, the fish Avhich ascend a 
hundred rivers, is somewhat at the expense of the other 
kinds of fish left behind. What one kind eats the 
others cannot have. In mouse times there are more 
and larger fish to go back to the sea, if partly because 
their enemies such as otter and mink neglect fishing for 
the easy mouse-hunt. There are more fresh-water 
trout left, too, to go down to the bays as they do, and 
join the hunt for caplin; and again, whatever they get 
the cod do not, nor the whales. 

The gulls may be regarded; they are neighbors, at 
least, with the fish — the predatory gulls which nest 
over the inland waters, picking up mice and young 
birds and all derelict life they can master, all things 
dead and alive. Their range extends from the cod 
and caplin swarming passages of the coast archipelago 
to the far apex of the peninsula at Kaneiapishkau 
Nichicun. 

The falcons ? When the mice go and famine comes, 
do they descend upon the young of the gulls, and vice- 
versa? Truly the maze of life is complicated! 

The year the mice disappeared I was not wholly 
away from their influence even at home in New Hamp- 
shire. They or their ghosts followed as in the old 
tale of the Mouse Tower. Whether as a case of cause 
and effect, that winter a remarkable flight of goshawks, 
the "winter hawks" of the Labrador, moved down 
upon the northern states, looking for food. There 
also appeared, so I read at the time, a wide flight of 
snowy owls. The hawks were a scourge to our na- 
tive game. One of them used to sit on a high dead 



Mice 299 

limb, CQmmanding a reach of woods behind our fam- 
ily house in Dublin, looking for partridges, which had 
become numerous. The patridges could cope well 
enough with our usual birds of prey, such as hawks 
and owls, and the ground animals, and had more than 
held their own for some time. But in the presence of 
this lightning bolt from the north they were helpless, 
and were picked up fast. By spring they were about 
all gone. 

In time, if whale and cod, wolverene and wolf, In- 
dian and falcon are not swept from the scene by our 
remorseless civilization, the important role of such 
creatures as have been mentioned, the low food- 
bearers, may be followed through, and what is casual 
inference, in many fields, may be demonstrated as true 
cause and result, or, on the other hand, dismissed as 
unwarranted. We can only put together first coin- 
cidences at sight, leaving further observation to deter- 
mine certainties. The thread of causality traced here 
is at least more obvious than some outdoor theories 
that are based upon longer experience; as was, for 
instance, Spracklin's belief that cod came in well at 
Fanny's only in years when berries were plentiful on 
the land. Who shall say? Among the myriad exist- 
ences of the open there is room for many a thread 
unseen. 



CHAPTER XI 

SOUTHEAST 

Between the Straits of Belle Isle and Hamilton In- 
let, facing eastward on the Atlantic, is a squarish 
peninsula averaging, if a certain frontage on the lower 
Gulf is included, 170 or more miles on a side. Its 
most notable indentation is Sandwich Bay, rather well 
north on the Atlantic side, and into which drains much 
of the high-level interior for a long way back. Taking 
the map for it the look is that this bay, or the river that 
it was when the country was higher, formerly emptied 
into the Hamilton instead of reaching the sea by an 
outlet of its own. There is plenty of ground, now 
sea bottom, for this to have happened on, between the 
present coast and the original far out shore line. Now 
the higher hill tops of this old coast area are above 
water. The question of what course the outer valley 
took, like others of Labrador physiography, turns 
partly on ice action. If the main agent in shaping the 
outer valleys was ice, its push might well have been 
straight through to the sea; if water, as is perhaps 
more likely, there would be more likelihood of gravita- 
tion toward the deeper valley of the Hamilton. 
Soundings may have already determined this, but the 
outer valleys, levelled up now by debris of the last 
ice period, may be past identifying by such simple 
means. In a matter of a few centuries the area will 

300 



Southeast 301 

be out of water again, at its rate of rise now. As 
things are going now, the submerged area may be 
out in due time, and examinations made dry shod. 

In general plan the present peninsula and its parent 
Labrador have a curious family resemblance when 
brought to the same size. The Mealy range along 
Hamilton Inlet and the Torngats of the northeast cor- 
respond, as do the Koksoak and Kenamou rivers with 
the Hamilton and Eagle, and the rims of the St. Law- 
rence slope with those to Hudson's Bay. To be 
strictly alike one or the other peninsula needs to be 
reversed, turned over, otherwise they are only sym- 
metrical, like one's two hands with the thumbs toward 
each other. The identity of type, however, is quite 
strikingly similar. The forces that brought about the 
foldings concerned would appear the same and perhaps 
to have acted at the same time. On the other hand 
the present region has peculiarities quite its own. One 
is the thinness of the Mealy range, which from 
Groswater Bay looks 2,000 feet high. Instead of be- 
ing a mere side slope for a higher level, as most walls 
of the sort in the country are, it is an actual mountain 
range, one with a relatively low area of swamps and 
barrens behind it, perhaps an old lake bottom, that ex- 
tends well to the heads of the Gulf rivers south. From 
the account of a Sandwich hunter who had once been 
as far as the Kenemich in winter, this level " waste 
land " practically butts against the high Mealy wall, 
without mentionable foothills. It would be interest- 
ing to know just the elevation above sea of this level 
area. Opposite the St. Augustine it is likely to be not 
far from 1,000 feet, judging from Bryant's survey 
of that river. 



302 Labrador 

The thinness of the Mealy range where cut by the 
Kenamou is remarkable; at little above sea level it is 
hardly four miles through. Here the range has foot- 
hills on the south, flanking the deep side valleys of the 
Kenamou. The tops of these hills are probably level 
with the plains eastward, or may be higher. 

An interesting feature of the interior is what may 
be called the Minipi V, the long and relatively nar- 
row basin of what is probably Eagle River. Hemmed 
in by the Gulf head- waters and the Paradise valley to 
the south and the waters of Kenamou, Kenemich, Bear 
and others to the north, yet well toward 200 miles 
long; this basin must be in the unusual position, for a 
long way, of occupying almost exactly the main east 
and west height of land. It is true that main divides 
in the north are apt to be like that of Thoreau's medi- 
tations on Umbazookskus Carry, where the King of 
Holland would have been in his element — in other 
words a watery flat waste, so that the depth of the 
Eagle valley may be nearly negligible, but its narrow- 
ness, considering its length, must be unusual. Withal 
the main height of land, at least from the St. Augus- 
tine to the Eskimo, is likely to turn out a meandering 
affair, at any rate there is a branch river coming into 
the Eagle along there, that heads somewhat to the 
southward. 

The probable position of this central valley, close 
against the main east and west divide of the country, is 
not past accounting for, pending examination. The 
glacial movement over the country during the last of 
the ice period, as shown by its striae, was somewhat 
east of southeast, but along this divide it took its north 
of east direction; part of the ice, however, going south 



Southeast 303 

down the GuK valleys. The general southeast flow 
would be obstructed by the Mealy foothills mentioned, 
but on the other hand guided by parallel ranges that 
reach the Kenamou from northwest 15 or 20 miles 
south of the Mealies where the foothills end. The 
country southward is flat. Once clear of the foothills 
and western ranges the ice could go anywhere. One 
would say most of it would go down the Gulf valleys. 
The short route to sea level seems to have drawn off 
the northern edge of the field, moving " by the flank," 
Sandwich way. A dead space or sort of eddy was 
left under the Mealy range, in its last stage a lake, held 
in on the Sandwich side by gravel deposits or ice. 
This dam cut down or melted, the silted lake bottom 
remained, with the Eagle valley marking the course 
of the ice stream along its southern border to Sand- 
wich. 

Minipi means Fish lake. The Indian route to it 
from the Hamilton takes off at Gull Island, 80 or 90 
miles up the latter river. The Minipi River emptying 
here does not come from the lake, though doubtless 
named either from being near it or being used as a 
route to it. Minipi is probably 60 miles long or more. 
The estimate of 200 miles from the head of Minipi to 
the sea depends upon the Gull Island route's leading 
about square off the Hamilton to it; if the route swings 
much to the east the distance of the lake from the coast 
must be less. 

The deep cut lower valleys of the general South- 
east are forested and not practical for foot travel 
in summer; the moss is deep and obstructions many. 
Canoe travel is better but not easy. The rivers have 
few actual falls, but strong rapids, but the rapids are 



304 Labrador 

often miles long. The St. Augustine has a portage 
of lo miles over a hill 700 feet high, the Eskimo one 
of 16 or 17 miles mainly through bogs, the Kenamou 
a stretch of 15 miles that few polers can get up at 
all and that is almost destructive to a canoe. Sand- 
wich Bay rivers are described as impassable. All are 
boulder and gravel rivers, spread out and unnavigable 
at very low water. Salmon go far up them and there 
are trout everywhere. Betw^een white hunters and In- 
dian the coastal valleys have been nearly cleaned of 
game save for rabbits and occasional spruce partridges. 
Caribou are not many, though both the woodland and 
barren-ground varieties occur. Geese, black ducks and 
loons breed in some numbers about the high level ponds. 
One ought not to starve in the region in summer, more 
than elsewhere in Labrador, but from its difficult rivers 
and complex inner routes the district is not an easy one 
to see much of in a season without a guide, and none 
is to be had. Indians will not ta!:e one into the inner 
country and no one else knows it. The region as a 
w^hole, rather the Jungle of Labrador, is not easy to 
deal wuth unless by airplane. 

Travel in the country is not helped by the absence of 
several important north fishes. The dependable one is 
the common trout, with pike and suckers as may be, 
and in places the fresh .water cod, Indian mildkato. 
Salmon help a traveller rather little and do not reach 
the higher levels. The lake trout, pike-perch, ouan- 
aniche and whitefish that in most other districts 
are one's solid reliance are wanting. To quote Low 
as to Labrador generally, " Salvelinus namaycush " 
(great lake trout), are very plentiful in the larger 
lakes of the interior northwest to Hudson's Straits. 




IN A TSHINUTIVISH LODGE 




HAIR SKINS, MISTINIPI, 1906 



Southeast 305 

Very abundant in the lake expansions of the Ham- 
ilton River and Lake Michikamau, average weight 
about 8 pounds but many taken over 25 pounds in 
weight. Ouananiche, found plentifully in both 
branches of the Hamilton River above the Grand 
Falls, also in Koksoak River below Kanaepishkau — 
common in Lake Michikamau, reported by Indians as 
common in the upper George, the Romaine, the Mani- 
quagan and several other of the rivers flowing into the 
Gulf of St. Lawrence. 

" Common whitefish are found abundantly through- 
out the interior in lakes and rivers. The largest was 
taken in Lake Michikamau, 14 pounds in weight; 
average weight 3 or 4 pounds. Stigostideum vitreum, 
Wall-eyed pike, Dore, Perch of the H. B. Co., are 
common in the southern rivers flowing into Lake St. 
John and to the westward, also in the Rupert and East 
Main rivers of the western watershed. They are 
rarely found in the Betsiamites River and not found 
west of that stream, being unknown to the Indians of 
Mingan. Not found in the Big River or streams to 
the north of it, nor in rivers of the eastern or northern 
watersheds. The average weight is 3 pounds." 

From good Indian report the latter fish is found in 
a round lake, 9 miles across, just east of Maniquagan, 
and this would imply its reaching halfway to the 
Moisie. In fact it goes much farther, well toward 
Minipi at least. This I gathered in 19 12 from Pier- 
rish, chief at Romaine, who spoke English well. 
Moreover the fish grows large both in its very wide 
western habitat and at times in eastern waters. Ont 
of 26 or 28 pounds was reported from Kiskisink, north 
of Quebec, in 1900 or a little later by my Montagnais 



306 Labrador 

friend J. Bastian, who was guiding there when it was 
caught and saw it. Pierrish said that the Indians 
mostly lost their very large ones owing to their weak 
tackle. This would be natural enough, for when fish- 
ing for a living almost anyone will let his tackle get 
down to average requirements; it is only the sports- 
man who keeps his up to the possible big fish. . . . 

The lands of the Romaine Indians reach Minipi or 
very near it. That the Mingan Indians farther west 
do not know the pike-perch is hard to believe, there 
is some room for unveracity and more for simple mis- 
takes, and Low's conversation is likely to have been 
through an interpreter, who may have been Bastian 
himself, at that time a mere indefatigable boy. If 
he upset things then it would not have been the first 
time, as* a little episode when he was with me on Mani- 
quagan may show. One rainy day I had the half 
dozen Indians of the party in council over local place 
names, among them Toolnustuk, belonging to a branch 
river near and translated in Low's text as Elbow river. 
The word for elbow does apply fairly. The name, 
properly Tudnustuk, was duly explained to me. Af- 
terward I asked Bastian, who had been with Low on his 
Maniquagan expedition, how it was that some names 
had been given wrong meanings. " Don't know," 
he answered, " Sometimes ask me. ... I only a boy 
and had no one to talk to — had t-o tell him some- 
thing!" It is no reproach to my friend Low or his 
remarkable professional work that he was sometimes 
caught in this way; there is no sure guard against it; 
sometimes, indeed, the most competent Indian is at a 
loss. 

It is no wonder that John had not been able to see 



Southeast 307 

the meaning of Toolnustuk. Several members of my 
council knew what it was, but were sometime in shap- 
ing an explanation. Finally the spokesman turned to 
me. "You see, if the traine " (an expedition of 
canoes or sleds) " was going up the river, and wanted 
to stop, they could not find a place to stop, because 
there are no lakes on the river. So we call it * Can't- 
find-it-river.' That is what Tudnustuk means." Their 
" stop " may mean something of a stay, and the name 
Tudnustuk imply a rapid stream with steep banks, awk- 
ward to camp on. Widenings with little current are 
often termed lakes by the Indians. 

East of Minipi, at any rate, four of the most im- 
portant fishes of the country are wanting, and also, by 
statements of old Edward Rich, in the Northwest or 
Nascaupee river area too. One reason, Edward said, 
that the Northwest River Indians pushed north into 
the barrens between the middle George and the coast 
was because the trout in their own country were small, 
and he had little to say of other fishes. It would be 
interesting to know whether lake trout, ouananiche or 
whitefish from Michikamau have descended to the 
large Seal Lake on the Nascaupee. Whether or no 
the total area from which these are absent, taking 
the country both north and south of the Hamilton, and 
that might be termed the small trout area, is a large 
one. There are of course large trout in all estuaries 
and in some places inland. In general the larger trout 
appear to work toward the salt water and only return 
upstream to spawn. 

Something may be said of causes, first that the ab- 
sent species are western ones, the pike-perch and 
namaycush rather far western ones, the former belong- 



308 Labrador 

ing more south, the latter north, and in large size. 
From about a thirty pound maximum in Labrador the 
namaycush reaches nearly a hundred in Lake Superior, 
and quite that in Great Bear Lake. Both species are 
fresh water ones, I do not know of their entering 
brackish water at all. 

With the departure of the ice the return of most 
species, rather certainly of the pike-perch or okaii, must 
have been from the west. The peninsula was lower 
then, 600 feet at the Saguenay, 300 or 400 or more 
along the Atlantic, and ascent to the high level was by 
so much lessened. Perhaps the fish came by the long 
and slow rivers of the Hudson's Bay side. The south 
part of " The Bay," as H. B. Co. people have it, 
should have been fresh then, from the vast flow, filling 
the wide valleys to the foothills, from the melting cap. 
But one can imagine steeper ascents, of stray fish 
caught above ice-dammed gorges and locked, so to say, 
upward, over flowed-out falls — then striving and 
pushing on as might be up the interminable rushing 
water courses that were over the country. A locking 
in a thousand years, two thousand, during the long 
retreat of the ice, in one of many rivers, and the 
thing were done. Or as happened rivers were turned 
by ice dams into other valleys than their own — 
here, there, where the slopes at one pitch of water 
or another could be ascended. The element of time 
came in, longer or shorter, and time there was. Some 
species would be in the advance, some not. Some 
are not adventurous, cling to their places in spite of 
changes and conditions until they perish ; one species 
spreads fast and another not. All require their own 
conditions, these change, and always here and there 



Southeast 309 

are remnant species that cannot change with them and 
will disappear. 

By the time the okau and namaycush had arrived at 
the eastern area conditions for their dispersal had 
changed for the worse; by mere shrinkage of water 
and drying of divides their further advance may have 
been impossible. As fresh water species they could 
not go around by sea and up the rivers, which in any 
case are too fast and shallow for them. With trout, 
at home in the full salt of the sea, and equally so be- 
hind a stone in a screeching rapid, the case is different. 
They are perfectly fitted also to the shallow black bot- 
tomed ponds over the north. The trout is a com- 
mitted explorer colonist, and given only a little 
cool decent water, will turn up almost anywhere on the 
eastern side of the continent. 

The case of the ouananiche is another matter. 
Really a salmon living in fresh water, the only ques- 
tion is how he came by the habit, or from the point 
of view of those who regard the salmon as origin- 
ally a fresh water fish, how he came to keep it. He 
does not do so invariably, but if he takes to the sea 
long becomes a sea salmon, with all its size and ways. 
From the present central habitat of the ouananiche, 
well west toward the Saguenay, it may be guessed that 
his distance from the sea was the main thing that kept 
him at home. This may have been the case with the 
land-locked salmon of Maine, for at a former time 
there seems to have been land outside the Grand Lake 
vicinity by which the fish is now known. Its existence 
in the larger lakes of Newfoundland may be condi- 
tioned upon its having, from the nature of the rivers, 
a particularly hard road to the sea, certainly in the 



310 Labrador 

dry seasons. The fish is one of very special condi- 
tions, living almost wholly upon smaller ones, unlike 
the trout. In waters where it occurs naturally it does 
not often grow to more than 6 pounds, but when 
transplanted, as at Sebago Lake, it has reached 24, 
In such lakes as Minipi and others of the present region 
it should do well, but as the habits of the fish are, little 
is to be argued from its absence anywhere. 

WHiite-fish occur north of Davis Inlet, when they 
are said to come into brackish water, and they un- 
doubtedly do reach tide level. It must be said, after 
all, that the absence of this fish and any others from 
southeastern Labrador may be due simply to the un- 
suitability of most of the rivers for them, if not the 
larger lakes. 

THE SANDWICH BASIN 

From recent sketches by St. Augustine Indians it appears that Minipi 
Lake may not drain toward Sandwich Bay but perhaps with the Hamil- 
ton, and after all by way of Minipi River, though the Northwest River 
people have seemed clear enough to the contrary. If this lake is outside 
the Sandwich basin the total length of the latter would not be much 
over 150 miles. 

A traverse during the past summer of 1920 from Shekatika, near St. 
Augustine, to Sandwich Bay, by the Coxsippi, upper Eskimo and Paradise 
rivers develops the remarkable shallowness of the many lakes of the 
high level. Very largely they must freeze to the bottom, a sufl&cient 
reason for absence of the lake trout and some other fishes. Trout, pike 
of moderate size and suckers are fairly abundant and in Minipi Lake 
are also, by Indian report, ouananiche and milakats or fresh water cod. 



CHAPTER XII 

ESKIMO BAY AND RIVER 

From the Davis Inlet coast, with its people of 
Eskimo cast and high tailed Eskimo dogs, its bays of 
one or two families, or none; its occasional parties of 
keen Indians from the George, in skins or not, speaking 
their Eiino — from these to the fishing stations of 
Belle Isle Straits and the lower Gulf is a step well to 
the modern. Some of the stations are rather vil- 
lages. Spare rooms occur, and books. The canoe 
on trips is rather superfluous ; sleeping under it does 
not occur to one. Many of the band of St. Augustine 
Indians, deplorably now in trousers, have a little 
French or English. In St. Paul River village, at the 
head of Eskimo Bay, fashion plates have been seen, 
and at the time of my stay there in 191 3 their man- 
dates, by aid of Quebec resources via certain trading 
schooners, were being followed with effect, this more 
apparent from the unexplained circumstance that chil- 
dren born at " The River " are nearly all girls. 

That year, 191 3, I arrived at Bonne Esperance, in. 
the eastern entrance to the bay, in September. As 
the Whiteleys, to whom the station there belongs, were 
closing down and returning to St. Johns for the winter, 
I dropped into a boat with some people leaving for 
their winter places up the bay, along with two girls from 
the east side of Newfoundland who were out on their 

311 



812 Labrador 

first venture as school teachers. One of the latter was 
tall, the other petite ; they had lost their baggage, might 
not get it at all that year, and, taking the place and 
all, seemed rather in for it. The small one looked far 
from home, though as things turned out with them 
I need not have worried about it. The River, as they 
call the village at the head of the stream, is 8 or 9 
miles from Bonne Esperance, through passages and 
bays among high islands, treeless, but good to see in 
their moss. The Eskimo comes in narrow, widening 
above to a sort of final bay or lake and not losing the 
tide for some way beyond it. There were 16 or 17 
houses and a mission chapel. I took up with the 
William Goddards, later with the Jack Fequets. Jack 
and I had a bond in our Jersey island blood, and on the 
strength of a family look I assumed cousinship, which 
in a way reached his eight daughters as well as his 
brother's sons, eight of them. These are a few miles 
away at Old Fort village, where without explantion 
the children are nearly all boys. 

The active event of the two weeks' stay was the 
rafting of Jack's wood, cut the winter before, from 
some miles up the river. The wood was mostly fir 
poles averaging perhaps four inches at the butt. We 
were quite a party, on the barn raising principle, and 
noisy; everybody had a plan, though Jack always 
shouted loudest at the last. The raft was quite an af- 
fair by the time it was done. While towing down river 
the motor-boat balked. We lost the tide. The raft 
stuck and we had to go back for it next day. Then "we 
stood the poles all up in a conical pile, snow country 
fashion, in front of Jack's house. A good deal of 
wood is sledded down with the dogs in winter as 



Eskimo Bay and River 313 

needed, but several other houses had their cones up 
before I left. 

The main business of the people was cod-fishing, and 
some fur was caught. Jack kept a store, and was the 
principal fur trader of that" part of the coast. There 
was not much doing for anyone at the time of my 
visit. Some wood was rafted. I saw fox traps be- 
ing boiled with evergreen boughs to mitigate their 
smell, and the day I came Jack shot a lot of welcome 
eiders and black ducks from his motor-boat. The 
ducks were only a taste among the many mouths that 
they reached, we were chiefly on salt cod, bread and tea. 
The time was between seasons, with little that was 
fresh to be had. The vegetables they usually got 
from Quebec were evidently a prize, were mentioned 
lingeringly. The girls never spoke of anything else 
in the same tone, not even — to me — of their 
clothes. They must have dreamed of them. It was 
a curious touch. When their ship comes in — not the 
Quebec schooner but the one we all pass — it will bring 
many, many of these. That year the schooner they 
chartered had not come and would not — by a hap- 
pening of darkness, a wrong course on the compass 
and a rocky shore. 

The patriarch of the place was John Goddard, 
grandfather of Jack's girls and some of their cousins. 
His build and face and all-around seafaring beard be- 
longed with ships of the line and Nelson's day rather 
than the present-day River village. He read the services 
in the chapel. I went to his rabbit snares with him, back 
in the scrub, but my company did not bring him luck. 
Grandma Goddard, who showed her strain of Eskimo, 
had not lost the art of making the remarkable seal 



314 Labrador 

boot of the race. Jack's eldest daughter and I went 
over one evening and dined with the old people, and 
Marty was there, the granddaughter who lived with 
them and looked after the house. The two girls wore 
their best, I should say. They will never look better, 
one dark and the other fair, nor, on the whole, need to. 
To see Marty G. coming down the path with two pails 
of water one of those mornings in the sunlight was 
not the worst thing for one's eyes — no, not the worst. 

The winter life of the place, which had been aban- 
doned during the summer fishing, was now under way. 
The people were glad to be home again. The place, 
i. e. the girls, had received the small teacher — the 
other had gone to Old Fort Village — by a march in 
the late twilight up and down along the row of houses, 
five girls abreast, the teacher in the middle of the first 
row. It was their presentation. They were not very 
visible, but one felt their vitalized swish and tramp. 
They were with her. In truth it was their presentation 
of themselves in the matter that most remained with 
me. 

The teacher and I did what we could toward a visit 
to the friend at Old Fort, but the motor-boat would 
not start, I am easily a Jonah to any of them. The 
day was dark and cold, with wind, and after an hour 
in the boat we watched what could be seen of our 
head-down skipper from the house, then gave up. 
With the increasing wind a bad point that had to be 
rounded would have been wet or impossible anyway. 

The next year I heard a little of how the winter 
went with the small teacher. The school had been out 
of hand before she came, the big boys rough and the 
rest doing as they pleased. It was a question whether 




H 



Eskimo Bay and River 315 

even man's strength could bring order. In truth the 
older heads of the village, on seeing the slight new- 
comer, had had little or no hope for her. Perhaps it 
was to have some test at once that she was asked to 
read the first of the year service in the chapel. Her 
tension as she stood up was plain, but she put it through, 
and well. So at the school ; the vicious ones began in 
the old way, bit upon something, in the end fell away. 
I had a letter from her written as she was leaving for 
home the next summer, saying she liked the place and 
people, had had a good time. There had been plenty 
of rabbits and white partridges all winter, she was 
getting plump, was going back. 

In October snow began to show on the hills. I had 
had no inland trip that year, and restless from this 
and in no mood for conventional travel fell uninvited 
upon a trading schooner about to start from the next 
bay for Halifax. It was partly her yacht looks that 
made me insist, but if I had known her skipper, Reed, 
and her mate, old Captain Hirst, as well as afterward 
I should have been keener and they perhaps less re- 
luctant to take me. However I threw my ulster down 
in a bare bunk for a mattress and we were off. The 
schooner was the Mora, light laden with fish. 
Luckily, as times were to be, we accumulated some 
eiders and black ducks at Cape Whittle while wind- 
bound. The main Gulf was only windy, but once 
lapped upon Cape Breton a great gale came on. For 
three days we were blown about the Grand Banks, out 
of all reckoning, finally turning up from northeast 
under the East light of Sable Island, We got away 
from there, which was something, eventually to a har- 
bor at White Head near Canso. Probably we were 



316 Labrador 

lucky. The wind continued against us and I took to 
land travel from there. 

ESKIMO RIVER 

Part of my getting two unspoiled young Indians 
for a trip on Eskimo in 19 16 may have come from my 
meeting old Kutnow, known also as Charley ]\Iarks, 
the year before at St. Augustine. We could not ex- 
pand much, as our means of communication were 
limited, but sat together in the little office room at the 
Post and talked of the country and somewhat of life, 
as older people do. I felt drawn to the dark solid old 
man, who was doubtless a manitsesht, one close to the 
spirits, with all the primal dreams of the gift. He 
would have told me, I think, anything he could. They 
were all there for me, the vast strange things of the 
other side, if I had only had enough of the language to 
receive them, but we ceased with the things of daylight, 
the material. I tried, we knew there was something for 
us beyond, but the aura passed. Two years after- 
ward when I saw him again he was older and ill, and 
the last man of the Gulf region that I know of who 
could have drawn the final veil of the race for me was 
beyond response. 

Soon after our conversation I took boat with some 
bay people who were going home to Shekatica, where 
I stayed a day, windbound, with William Shetley, put- 
ting in the time talking and gorging at meals the won- 
derful Labrador herring that were about the passages 
then. Shetley spoke of old Charley, who had been at 
the landing as we left " He told me you talked with 
him," and later, " He said to me, ' that's a good man.' " 



Eskimo Bay and River 317 

(Mais pentetre). Shetley finished with "He's a 
grand old man! " 

The next year at Bonne Esperance I sent word to 
my friend Johnson at St. Augustine post for two men 
for Eskimo, if he could get them, and down came 
Sylvester, old Charley's son, with a friend named 
Winipa, by the Post people called Blackie, a sturdy 
boy who looked full Indian. It took persuasion by 
Johnson to get them, but I imagine that if it had not 
been for my visit of the year before his efforts would 
have failed. I mention these particulars because the 
bringing of hunting Indians into trip service is rarely 
possible and as rarely successful when arranged. Yet 
be it said there is no such wilderness pleasure as with 
unspoiled Indians in their own country, young Indians 
who have never been out with a white person. 

The time was early in August. George Whitely 
took us by motor-boat well above the River village; 
the start and day were good. The cuttings for wood 
along the narrow river levels ran out in nine or ten 
miles above the village and we were off on the fine 
untouched river among high hills, that ran with the 
stream. In a few hours the current increased and in 
a closing in of the hills that was rather a gorge I was 
let out on the east bank and told of a path some way 
up the hillside. The path was easy to find, but the little 
used lower part, the high water portage, was obstructed 
and bad, though the upper end was well enough. 
Looking down a ravine along I caught sight of the 
boys pushing hard from the other side among surges 
to make the low water landing and was as well pleased 
to be out of it. There was no actual fall that I re- 



318 Labrador 

member, but the narrowed pitches at the top were be- 
yond passage up or down. The river above widened 
in lake-Hke calm. The place is known as Grassy 
Point. The men mentioned camping but I held them 
on a couple of miles. Above the falls a route leads 
east through large lakes and headwaters that prob- 
ably interlock with those of the St. Mary's and Alexis 
rivers of the Atlantic side. Somewhere in this direc- 
tion Indians occasionally winter and bring in good 
hunts of fur. Along this part of Eskimo the lower 
hills are lightly timbered, the higher ones barren at 
the top. All hills seen from Bonne Esperance are 
treeless, and from about the head of tide a large area 
of open moss hills extends west and northwest in coun- 
try otherwise considerably forested. Here summer a 
few woodland caribou and in the fall appear some 
numbers of barren ground caribou, " Those old long- 
horned ones come out in October," an Old Fort hunter 
had it. This northeastern or Labrador caribou of the 
barrens has been recognized as a distinct sub-species, 
perhaps even entitled to standing as a full species. 
Its chief difference from R. Arcticus of the continent 
west of Hudson Bay is in the sweep and heavier tim- 
bering of the horns. 

Sylvest turned to getting the tent up for the night, 
and looked at me inquiringly for approval of the ex- 
act bed place. The two had watched me rather 
narrowly through the day, ready to note my not-to-be- 
expected white man's ways. Their feelings were not 
to be envied at this stage. They were well enough 
used to our insensitive ways at the shore among houses, 
but here, where streams ran and their own life was, the 
thing could only be hard. 



Eskimo Bay and Biver 319 

With whatever of prepossessions as of one white 
man from another, they were taking among their pres- 
ences of air and water and land one of a race that 
could not understand. It was not easy for them. Yet 
they wanted to do their part, and would at least try. 
I don't think I seemed the worst. They must have 
seen that I did not carry unnecessary furniture and I 
am not sure that they bothered their minds much at 
having to take up in the small tent with me. 

They brought the tent out, and when they looked to 
me about the place for it, I saw my chance and was un- 
responsive. It was time for a little beginning. I 
moved my eyes across the clear western sky — we 
were on the east side of the wide river — and observed 
" Mauats chimun-ah?" "It is not going to rain, is 
it? " Sylvest shook his head. " Mauats mitshiwap," 
" No tent " I said, and walked off with my blanket 
till I came to a comfortable spot for myself and settled 
down. It was an Indian way, though an Indian might 
not have liked to sleep quite so far from others. The 
boys settled down where they were without comment, 
(and for the first time that day the incubus of white 
presence seemed abated.) We had begun to be In- 
dians together. 

On first landing we had paddled a mile or so up to 
a brook called Uinashuk, probably meaning in this 
case the same as Winikapau, sour willows. The boys 
expected many trout. We did get a fair mess, run- 
ning to a half pound, but there were only two or three 
left and these turned shy. The water was too clear 
and the pools small for one thing. But it is curious 
how wholly unfished trout can go shy just as the 
sophisticated ones do at home. Here the main cause 



320 Labrador 

both of the small number and unreadiness of the fish, 
1 think, was the presence of salmon in that part of the 
river. Trout are the special enemy of the salmon, 
eating their eggs disastrously and it seems rather out 
of nature that the salmon should not regard them with 
corresponding disfavor. Apparently they chase the 
trout out of the pools and generally upset their equi- 
librium, and what trout there are about seem harried 
and not to know their own minds. The cause of this 
may not be the salmon of course, but rather that 
August is a restless and scattering month for the trout 
in these rivers, coming as it does between the active 
feeding and growing period of early summer and de- 
parture for the spawning beds in September. At any- 
rate in the St. Augustine in 19 12, where Bryant found 
trout everywhere in July, and also in Kenamou, where 
Northwest River hunters said there were trout by 
millions, we could not in August easily get all we could 
have used. On the other hand in the salmonless As- 
siwaban farther north, August is the month of months 
for trout, in places it seems as if one could load a boat 
with three-pounders at twilight. 

A few miles above the gorge the valley takes a long 
slant to the west and turns north again, the river com- 
ing down wide and easy. Near the turn northward 
Sylvest swept his arm toward a long mountain on the 
left, saying, "No animals at all, nothing!" White 
hunters have cleared the game from all the deep valleys 
that lead to the central high level. From Sandwich 
Bay some go a hundred miles in, encroaching some- 
what on the plateau grounds of the Indians. Even 
there caribou are scarce. A Sandwich Bay hunter I 
talked with in 1906 said he had never had a shot at 



Eskimo Bay and River 321 

one. Apparently this hunter's route lay northwest to- 
ward the Kenemich, where the large Mud Lake, by 
his account, empties west by that river and by another 
outlet east toward Sandwich. At the time I took it 
that this lake was further south than it is, and within 
the Minipi V., and was probably known to the Indians 
as Kenamou, meaning Long Lake. I am now sure 
that the name is not a lake term at all, but describes 
in some way the practically lakeless Kenamou river. 
The Indians must know its meaning, but I have not 
been able to get it out of them, rather likely because 
it is impoHte beyond mention. My own translation 
certainly is, though no worse than the actual river. 

After turning north again the Eskimo is wide for 
some miles, with occasional large boulders in the upper 
reaches. Here and there one was topped by a harbor 
seal, sometimes two, looking large and conspicuous in 
relation with the small trees of the shores. Some were 
large old fellows. They gave the river an inhabited 
look, and nothing is more human than a seal. They 
would slide or tumble off at fifty or a hundred yards 
away, appearing again below. We laughed at their 
expressive inquiry about us, and their funny sudden- 
ness when they went. Can-you-beat it ! was in their ex- 
pression at the last. They were cheering, the river had 
been lonely before with only a rare loon or wisp of 
sheldrakes, but here were its people. 

Opening to the east, at some 35 miles up the river, 
is a remarkable pool at least a half mile wide. Along 
its upstream side the river comes pitching in over small 
gravel in four or five shallow streams well separated 
by bushy islands. About one of the middle streams, a 
trifle larger than the others, were twenty or thirty 



322 Labrador 

seals, waiting in a crescent like cabmen at a gate, evi- 
dently devoting themselves to the salmon as they passed 
into the shallow current. It was a wonder how any 
fish got by, and none at all why the Chevaliers' net 
fishing at the River village had fallen off. The seals 
flocked about as we came, sticking up an occasional 
head a few yards away, the main group running half 
angrily to and fro in the background like dogs driven 
away from a cat. They moved off east and we saw 
them swimming about the far end of the pool in some- 
what calmer mood. They have their young up here 
away from the sea, but I should say must go down in 
the fall. 

For the next two or three miles the canoe had to 
be waded up the wide shallows in places. This is not 
a common resort with Indians, for by turning out all 
but one person to walk the banks the canoe is ordinarily 
lightened enough to be poled. It is remarkable what 
fast bars the Indians will push up, often with their 
last ounce of strength but little appearance of it, never 
appearing hurried but never losing. Their average 
rate where they can go up at all keeps one stepping 
the loose cobble banks without much waiting, some- 
times for miles. Their poles are not shod. As they 
broom at the end they are sharpened again with the 
hatchet. If there was much rock bottom to deal with 
there would be trouble accordingly. 

Some two miles above this pool is a hunting " tilt," 
in other words a small log cabin, belonging to John 
Bowlen of Old Fort. He and Lewis Robin, with 
sometimes two others, have appropriated the frontier 
between the other white hunters and the Indians, ap- 
parently elbowing both ways for their ground. Their 



Eskimo Bay and River 323 

farthest limit is at a pond some way in, where later 
we found their tent and canoe scaffolded for the sum- 
mer. We took up with John's tilt for the night and 
by noon the next day were at the long portage, some 
forty miles from the River village. From the looks 
of a tumbling rapid coming around a bend from east 
about three hundred yards ahead there was no doubt we 
were at the head of navigation. The day was very 
hot. The river had been swift and hard and we 
simply lay about the hot rocks with no fancy for 
getting our things up the hundred foot bank to the 
camping place. I started a good trout or two in the 
tails of boulders near, but do not remember getting 
any. The hot sun was on them. After a little Syl- 
vest asked if he could try. He could hardly have 
handled a fly-rod before, it was the only one we had, 
and I said a nearly audible farewell to it as he started 
off. I saw myself cutting alders to fish with in future, 
and they would do in a fashion, but I hated being with- 
out the rod. Sylvest went up-stream a way and be- 
gan to cast. After a while he returned, not only with 
a large trout and two smaller ones, but to my surprise 
with the rod as good as ever. As we settled down 
again I thought the danger well over, but presently 
could not help seeing that the Winipa was eyeing the 
rod. Now there's no chance, I thought, but asked 
him if he wanted to try. He went down stream, to 
come back with a catch equal to Sylvest's. Still the 
rod was sound, and more, they had both beaten me at 
my own lifelong game. 

At the camping place up over the bank were some 
winter lodge poles and an old sweat bath. The latter 
is found almost everywhere where Indians have stayed 



324 Labrador 

any length of time in the bare ground season. In the 
evening we made plans. If the trip was to amount to 
much we should have to go over the portage twice, 
and as the canoe was heavy I proposed that we go over 
first without it and then decide about taking it across. 
The route cuts across a wide northeast swing of the 
Eskimo and much of the way is miles from it. The 
Old Fort hunters called the portage twenty miles long. 
It is a part of a winter route to Sandwich Bay that 
has been traversed a few times by white persons. In- 
dications are that it does not depart much from a 
straight line from the mouth of Eskimo to Sandwich, 
paralleling the east coast at about seventy miles in- 
land. The air hne distance is about a hundred and 
thirty-five miles. 

Sylvest knew a surprising amount of the worst Eng- 
lish I ever heard from an Indian. We invariably got 
tangled before we were through in matters of any 
complexity. In the matter of what we should take 
over the portage he put his ideas vigorously, " Uh- 
hot! Not carry much flour to eat over there, we find 
plenty to eat! You no fraid, we find plenty all sum- 
mer." So we started fairly light, but taking my little 
434 pound 28 gauge and enough cartridges, besides the 
rod. The boys' packs may have been 60 pounds or 
more. The path follows the river north a quarter of 
a mile or more, then strikes west up a steep slope for 
several hundred feet of rise to the upper level of 
stunted bog spruce and deep-moss bogs. Here and 
there were peaty ponds a few rods across, sometimes 
with a solitary sandpiper or two poking about the mud 
margin. About the middle of the day one flew to the 
top of a high scraggly stub, fluttered and cried and 



Eskimo Bay and River 325 

went on as I had hardly known a bird to do before. 
The boys said it had a nest near. The Indian name 
of the solitary I have forgotten, but it means the bird 
that laments, weeps, and the solitary more than de- 
serves the title. 

On a low white-moss ridge, an old burnt ground, 
were many blueberries, but a worse lot of black flies 
than I have often seen kept me from getting quite my 
share of them and I sat in a breeze on the top of the 
ridge while the boys finished their browse. As with 
the far worse mosquitoes of the great barrens north 
the Indians seemed to get off with about half the bites 
I had. In this their life inoculation by fly poison 
doubtless plays a part, but in my case I think the matter 
of salt came in, the salt of my perspiration. This I 
had noticed in the north barrens. Whenever I was 
sweating freely the mosquitoes became raging, and 
when my skin was dry they became relatively quiet. 
I think salt is considerably the key in this matter. The 
way things went when one was in bathing is in point. 
Once arrived at the courage to depart one's clothes and 
get into the river the thing was over. Coming out 
with cool clean skin the mosquitoes hardly touched 
one, though if only from memory of what had been 
no one lingered in getting something on. 

The northern Indians eat no salt at all, the southern 
ones little, and both are of an active, lean type that 
sweats little. On the present occasion I was unusually 
soft and probably with an abnormally high salt habit 
from being thrown much upon the pickled resources 
of north Europe and Russian hors d'oeuvres tables. 
Why a mosquito should want salt, if he does, is not too 
clear, or for that matter, as he is set down as a vege- 



326 Labrador 

tarian, why he is after blood, as he certainly is. As 
to the salt, one is easily convinced that in vigor and 
general " pep," as the saying is, shore and tide marsh 
mosquitoes stand with any. Withal it is these same 
pests of the littoral that have guarded the Atlantic 
side of Labrador against exploration for the summers 
of ten generations, meeting all visitors in dense ranks at 
the shore, pursuing, in their airplane clouds, the crews 
upon decks far out in the passages, driving them below 
hatches and taking possession. These are salt satu- 
rated crews. Yet on the other hand, one of the rec- 
ognized stimulants of their activity is the presence of 
Eskimo dogs, to whom a meal of salt meat is their 
last ; it simply kills them. The " flies " harry the old 
dogs, kill the puppies. Mosquitoes do like blood, if 
perhaps better when salted. For the present purpose 
it may do to rank the pesty vegetarians with the larger 
ones, such as grass eating mammals and non-carni- 
vorous birds that we know about. These are keen for 
salt, for more salt than they get in their ordinary food 
and water; cattle, horses and the deer kind are con- 
spicuous here. The cattle of high pastures, where the 
water has not picked up much mineral from the 
ground, are said to be more eager for salt than those 
of low pastures. The seed eating birds, crossbills, 
siskins, and the like, that drop down where kitchen 
water is thrown out, find salt, though there is a further 
question of grease and the like. Certain parrots, 
vegetable eaters, are said to make long expeditions for 
salt. But one does not see the insect-eating birds look- 
ingf for it, or the common cat or other flesh-eaters. 
It is reasonable that a creature like these that lives 
on others of the same material as itself should get 



Eskimo Bay and River 327 

along without special additions. As a matter of fact 
northern Indians and Eskimos do get along without 
salting their food. Part of our own demand for salt 
is probably habit, we acquire taste for it. For myself, 
when thrown upon an exclusively meat diet under ac- 
tive conditions the salting of fresh meat seems to des- 
troy finer flavor and leave not much but the burn of 
an over-salted soup. With bread and the like one 
feels the salt call, and also, speaking for myself, with 
meat that is a little along, high. There may be a ques- 
tion of climate here — life in the tropics, with its need 
of cooling evaporation from the skin, along with its 
wide reliance on plant food, may have its own de- 
mands. There decomposition is rapid, and the organ- 
isms that enable it are everywhere. These organisms, 
comparatively wanting in the north, may not be the 
same as in the tropics, northern decay processes sug- 
gest this. Around the reindeer north people are able 
to bury their fish in the ground, perhaps for a year, 
and then use them. Such, in 191 5. were being sold 
at three usual places in Christiania. On the other 
hand the part of salt, as a liquefier, accompaniment 
of perspiration, witholder from decomposition, ne- 
cessity to a vegetable diet, may be relatively a leading 
one in the tropics. Probably all creatures must have it 
in some quantity, whether arrived at directly or by ap- 
propriation of another creature's content. The latter 
method, after all, somewhat parallels taking over the 
plant food of a meat animal by simple process of eat- 
ing him. 

The boys kept me going a little too fast that hot 
day in the bogs, though my pack was light, and when 



328 Labrador 

it began to rain I was willing enough to stop with the 
eleven miles we had done. One trouble had been that 
Winipa had done the youthful act of leading us up 
the hard hill from the river with a rush, which is 
always a thing to pay for in a long march, either by 
horse or man. He had to drop behind afterward, and 
for some time was out of sight. 

The next day turned cold and rainy before we made 
the five or six miles to the pond at the end. I wanted 
no more trips in scratching long-moss bogs, the low 
ridges gloomy with small spruce standing in moss. 
It is a depressing country. We had passed only one or 
two distinct caribou tracks, stamped in the bog months 
before. As a winter country this part of the plateau 
is not bad, there is good shelter and travel would be 
easy, and there would be small game, chiefly rabbits 
and spruce partridges, and willow ptarmigan as the 
season for them might be. The limited fish list, how- 
ever, would seem a poor showing to anyone used to 
other parts of the peninsula. The boys said there 
were pike in some of the ponds about, but small-pond 
pike are not a subject for enthusiasm. We had caught 
a few red-bellied trout (called salmon trout by Syl- 
vest) in a good stream early in the portage, but they 
were small, shy and not many. If I had never had 
the run of the fine north barrens with their game and 
fish I might have looked on what was about us as 
after all a good untouched wilderness, instinct with 
the expression of the forested north and in its way 
inspiring. As it was I was spoiled for it, though be- 
ing out with the good young Indians made me de- 
cently contented and in fact pleased with the days. 
It is the human that really counts, for better or worse. 



Eskimo Bay and River 329 

We put Bowlen's canoe in, paddled to a little island- 
like knoll not far along, put up the tent, had a bite, 
and in spite of the cold drizzle the boys went out with 
my gun to make good on their food guarantee. They 
fell upon an old pair of loons in sight of camp. When 
a bird went down they put the canoe the way it had 
been looking, paddling like demons, and were gen- 
erally close on when it rose. Their intensity at it was 
striking. As they had been virtually trout when they 
were fishing at the river so now there were loons, but 
with an endless ferity no loon could cope with. Soon 
they came back with the two big birds and a gosling 
loon they had killed with a paddle in the lily pads. 

A cold northeaster set in. The next day the boys 
came in wet, with an armful of black ducks. The 
small fireless tent was a poor place for them as they 
were, so they brought over Bowlen's ragged winter 
tent and stove and were in a good way. A flock of 
eight or nine geese trumpeted their way down into a 
passage behind the island across and later the boys 
made a long hunt to find them, but without success. 
When finally the storm blew out we paddled some 
way to the outlet and caught two or three dozen trout, 
none of more than nine or ten inches. It was good 
water but we seemed to have cleared them pretty well 
out. 

A chain of lakes and streams leads west of north to 
the Eskimo, a few miles on, and through its Big Lake 
toward the height of land. Sylvest pointed out a 
rather high burnt mountain that he said overlooked 
this lake, of which he made me a good map, drawing 
steadily almost the whole intricate outline without tak- 
ing his pencil from the paper. He was a natural 



330 Labrador 

draughtsman, and with great memory for natural fea- 
tures. The next year when a group of Indians at St. 
Augustine came to a halt in making a somewhat sloppy 
map of the region he managed to get hold of the pen- 
cil and carry the rest handsomely and clearly through. 

It was now a matter of our going on. The boys 
wanted to take Bowlen's canoe and go. This I was 
not quite willing to do, though much tempted. The 
way the boys were handHng the craft there would be 
as good as nothing left of it by the time we got back. 
There was a reason for it, the white hunters were un- 
welcome there, crowding the Indians off their grounds, 
and while the Indians did not dare act against them, 
my pair would have happily seen to it that there was 
no canoe left to hunt with in the fall, the easier that it 
was well worn already. When I said there would be 
no bottom left in it if we made the trip they said I could 
pay John. This I shouldn't have minded, but there 
is not much in the price of a canoe to a man coming 
to his farthest hunting place and finding himself with- 
out one. The thing might mean a thousand dollars of 
fur to him, besides, in his mind, as much more in 
silver foxes that he was sure he would have caught 
and wouldn't have. . . . The bogs were nearly afloat 
and it was too much to expect the boys to get my 
large canoe over and then back again, though I gave 
them the chance. I had seen the portage and did not 
press them. 

The last evening on the pond a curious sharp sound, 
a little doubtfully a bird note, came from up the shore. 
Coming nearer it seemed that of a bird more certainly. 
The boys had never heard it before, but said after a 
while they were sure it was koko, owl, but what kind 



Eskimo Bay and River 331 

they did not know. The note was nearly the sharp 
unpleasant draw of a file, lasting one and a half to 
two seconds, across a saw. When going on in the 
trees alongside the tent it annoyed me. The boys 
offered to fire the gun and drive the bird away, but 
presentl}/ it went itself. This was the first time I had 
found Indians at a loss about a sound. Yet the next 
year on St. Augustine the same thing happened, still 
another Indian had never heard the note before. We 
managed to shoot the bird and it turned out a common 
horned owl, of somewhat local coloration. Since then 
I have asked a good many persons familiar with the 
species if they had ever heard this note, but none had. 
The bird was moulting heavily and I have suspected 
used the note only when in this condition and as an 
expression of his pin feather feelings. As the Indians 
are out of the country in summer it was not very 
strange that the young persons concerned had not 
happened to hear it. When going on close it had the 
effect of a dentist's file on me. 

There was nothing of pin feathers and moping in 
the distant talk of geese that sometimes reached us in 
times of stillness, or in the cry of an occasional fast 
flying loon that passed high to some other pond. The 
longer cry of the loon, from the water, heightened the 
northern loneliness, yet peopled it after all. A smutty 
Labrador jay or two chortled and floated from tree to 
tree about the camp, and a red squirrel almost as dark 
took our intrusion as red squirrels do. Hardly less 
of the place than these creatures were the two Indians. 
It was not a bad little stay there at the UshtaJiut pond. 
I should like to camp on that knoll again. 

On going we left a few pounds of flour and lard 



332 Labrador 

on Bowlen's scaffold, and it brought the remark from 
him a year later " You were in there," in the tone of 
one making an admission. Without some such evi- 
dence all the shore would have had it that we had been 
only a little out of sight above the village. I am not 
sure but this unbelief of the shore people in accounts 
of trips inland extends to one another's statements. 
The thing is general over the northeast and gets tire- 
some. My first summer about Davis Inlet was over 
before the people would admit that I had ever been 
much out of sight, though by the time they had the 
evidence together, chiefly that of certain ration cans 
I used to throw away at meal places, they saw how it 
was. They were pretty bad themselves, almost every- 
one had been inland two hundred miles, " with the 
dogs." In the Straits region local versions of decent 
men's trips amount to libel, the worst case I have come 
upon being that of Henry B. Bryant's St. Augustine 
expedition in 1912. With no less an Arctic traveller 
than Russel W. Porter as surveyor the party made a 
good map, half of which I have verified, to the height 
of land, but the probably permanent story of the coast 
is that they only went a few miles, " about to where 
we go for wood." The coast people's never going in- 
land in summer lends itself to bad conceptions of the 
flies and heat, and they are not canoemen enough to 
realize what others can do. There is a touch of jeal- 
ousy in it. The latter trait, peculiarly natural to 
hunters and fishermen in mere self-preservation, can, 
along with careless statements, do other harm than post- 
ing one locally as a romancer. It is apt to affect such 
information as people could perfectly well give about 
the country. So it was with Hubbard in 1903, the 



Eskimo Bay and Eiver 333 

cloudy descriptions he had of conditions at the head 
of Grand Lake ought to have been better. Some of 
the people he talked with are among the best woods- 
men in the world, and no competent hunter but knows 
the value of good description to a stranger, and how 
to give it. It was so in the case of Kenamou in 19 19, 
our descriptions turned out scant. In a way this sort 
of thing is not surprising, the hunters' knowledge is 
their capital, hard earned, and they are under no obliga- 
tion to hand it to chance outsiders. 

On the way out I carried nothing but the rod. At 
one place, falling behind the boys, I over-ran the boys' 
tracks at a turn and lost twenty minutes or more re- 
covering the route where I had left it. For a while I 
was bothered, the bogs were alike and confusing. 
When I overhauled the others they were sitting down 
with their packs off, gazing scaredly at the back trail. 
I made no explanations and they asked none. Shortly 
we stopped by a little pond for luncheon, whereupon 
Winipa laid hands on a short club and disappeared 
among the bog spruces, returning presently with sev- 
eral spruce partridges. He had sneaked as near as he 
could and then thrown his club. 

Sylvest and I talked as we fried the birds, lying 
lazily on the moss in the sunshine, and in the end be- 
came tangled as usual. By this time what Indian I 
had was a little brushed up and I cleared the matter 
by putting in a phrase of some words with pretty good 
Indian intonation. Sylvest propped himself on his el- 
bow and looked at me in surprise, — " You talk Indian ! 
You talk Indian ! " " No," I said, " I know the names 
of a good many things." — "You can talk Indian! 
You with us two, three weeks, you talk Indian all 



334 Labrador 

right ! " My ears warmed a bit, we all have our little 
weaknesses. I had said nothing of knowing any of 
their words at the start, and the occasional straighten- 
ing out of a situation by a word or two had been hardly 
noticed. 

The day's walk, of perhaps sixteen or seventeen 
miles, was wet and seemed long. The bogs were well 
afloat. In the afternoon we lost the path for half an 
hour, swinging rather wide to the south, though aver- 
aging fairly well for direction. At the last Sylvest 
struck more north, tramping, as it seems now, two- 
thirds to his knees in the killing moss, and pack or no 
pack keeping me puffing and falling off behind. I 
nearly lost sight of him. It is fair to say that I was 
not up to my usual mark at the time. Our being off 
the path so long was no credit to our woodsmanship, 
but the portage was a winter one, and in these wide 
tree muskegs there was no continuous path — the In- 
dians went through here or there much as they hap- 
pened to. On the outward march also we were with- 
out a path for a time. 

A heavy black cloud rose behind us at the last, and 
I plunged down the river slope and to the camp place 
above the river to find the boys just raising the tent 
as a downpour broke. We escaped the worst of it 
and next morning were off under a blue and white sky 
in the fast river, full from the rain. At the pool Syl- 
vest let off a shot at an insolent seal that would not 
hurry, not much to its prejudice. With a rifle we 
could have disciplined the lot. Farther up Sylvest had 
put the canoe hard after a seal in fast shallow water, 
getting nearer each time it came up until we were 
alongside, when it doubled back and we went on. 



Eskimo Bay and River 335 

Excepting for a bunch or two of sheldrakes that led us 
until they were tired and took to the bushes there was 
little life on the river. On below the Grassy Point 
portage, as if it came to Sylvest that we were as good 
as at the shore and white man's methods appropriate, 
a touch of jockeying appeared; the canoe slowed. 
Sylvest was " tired," it was a hard day, we could not 
get very far before it would be time to camp. I ar- 
gued that it was nothing to what we had been doing 
other days, but with no response, I was annoyed, 
the steamer was due in a day or two and if a south 
wind came on over night we might be laid up at the 
head of the bay until it blew out. It was nearly sun- 
down before the meaning of the slacking came to me, 
and the remedy. Then I told Sylvest that if we got in 
that night I would count in the next day in paying 
him. He lighted up and forthwith we boiled along, 
three paddles going and a nearly empty canoe, as we 
had not done that day. As we neared the tide lake 
above the River village I asked Sylvest if he was tired 
now — "No, not tired," and on he went. 

In a way I evened with him later. There are two 
things Indians have deference for, one is night, when 
the various nianitu are abroad, the other the sea, and 
the two in combination are rather too much for them. 
If not alone they will take some risks with the land 
spirits, but night chances with the great manitu of the 
sea, the stupendous manitu whose slow, twice a day 
breathing causes the tides, are another matter. For 
this tide theory they are not without argument : — 
" I have myself," an Indian friend has said, " seen the 
water so coming and going from the breathing of a 
beaver under the ice." Now as we came to the long 



336 Labrador 

narrows above the vacant River village, the current 
with us, the air of the boys became absent, furtive, 
and instead of keeping to the middle they almost 
scraped the shore, I could not get them away from it. 
We were slowed by the shallow water and the eddies 
that were running against us, and in danger from 
under-water boulders we could not see in the twilight, 
while the main current we ought to have been in moved 
along well a few yards away. Luckily it was nearly 
low tide and most of the barricado boulders were up 
and visible or we must have struck all along, as it was 
the danger kept me scared. The boys kept where a 
jump would land them on shore or at least in very 
shallow water. How they crouched and paddled when 
they had to cross from one island to another! I had 
worked hard while they were slacking in the river 
above, now I dipped lightly and chuckled. While 
following around the comparatively safe end of a cove 
I got it out of Sylvest that things were not the same 
on salt water as they were on fresh. I was impatient 
at the whole thing, not liking to reach the Whiteleys' 
after they had turned in for their always short sleep- 
ing hours. It did no good to urge that the nianitu 
would not hurt them while I was along, this being my 
voyage, and that I had been travelling on salt water at 
night and alone all over the north. Finally I began to 
nag Sylvest on his want of courage, told him he was 
in twice the danger from the boulders than he was 
from spirits, that the spirits would get him anyway 
sooner or later, get him from behind, and I was glad 
of it. He was too scared to care what I said, in fact 
I doubt that he sensed much of it, but japing him 
helped me a bit as we followed around some exasper- 



Eskimo Bay and River 337 

ating little bays. Once on land the boys were them- 
selves again and after all the family were still up. 
Afterward Sylvest recounted our night run to George 
Whiteley, finishing, — " I frightened last night on the 
salt water. Old man not frightened — I frightened ! " 
We were in time for the steamer. I got Owen Chev- 
alier to sail the boys home and we parted for the year. 



CHAPTER XIII 

OBSERVATIONS 
BLACK-BACKED GULLS 

With later observations among black-backs, 
especially along the lower Gulf, I have come to believe 
that the old pair nesting on Entry Island at Davis 
Inlet, whose amazing ejaculations gave me my first im- 
pressions, had an unusual vocabulary. The ordinary 
giik-kuk-kk-kk of the bird when one is pushing among 
leafy weeds and bushes for the partly fledged squabs is 
far from justifying my sketch, nor would the plea of 
variation among individuals do it, though I think from 
their appearance and wrought-up state of mind the 
birds concerned would be as likely as any to show 
what an old northern bred pair could do. They 
seemed to have the island to themselves, and had prob- 
ably used the site a long time, a matter which goes 
with extreme manifestations with some birds. A 
pair I stirred almost to the point of onslaught in a 
later year, farther up the run, kept well to the usual 
diminishing gttk- scale, though the volume of their 
concussive notes as they swept near was remarkable. 
Withal it has been my impression that northern birds 
had more voice and intonation than southern ones, 
though this is a hard thing to be sure of. There is 
at least no doubt that I came upon the Entry Island 

338 



Observations 339 

pair at the height of their emotional season. About 
that region there was a plain falhng off in the range 
and expressiveness of the notes as the season went on, 
until in the course of three or four weeks they be- 
came dry and infrequent. By the last of August they 
were rarely heard at all. 

The cries of my sketch are not to be taken as 
exact, as an ornithologist would have them. But I 
think they are no more than fair to the vocabulary I 
heard about July 12, 1903. Afterwards I was never 
able, usually as a matter of ice, to reach the coast so 
early. 

CREATURE COLORATIONS 

The dispensation under which wild creatures more or 
less match their natural surroundings, at times seem 
part of them, is at its simplest in the north. Any one 
can see most of the resemblances ; there are no such 
problems as in the southern field, with its overhead 
blaze and the amazing creature costumes that go with 
it ; problems for the painter alone — no one else can get 
far with them. 

For the northern field only a fair eye for line and 
shade is needed, familiarity with the conditions and 
the ways of the creatures, not much else. In the case 
of such prevailing species as the northern hare and 
ptarmigan, ground color in summer, white in winter, 
interpretation is obvious to any one. Almost all the 
day creatures are lighter in winter than summer, com- 
monly, where they are really white, with a dark or black 
mark somewhere. The problem of all these is simple; 
a beginners' study so to say, in black and white. 

Morning and evening tints are somewhat reckoned 



340 Labrador 

with, the warm lights of the long sunrise and sunset 
periods ; there is not much call otherwise for pure color. 
The spruces are rarely lit to more than bronze, the 
birches to pale yellow. How a tanager would blaze in 
these ! 

There are delicate touches of almost all colors. The 
buff-breasted merganser carries its singularly beauti- 
ful under tint, an idealization from spring rivers in 
their yellow brown; but it is faint, detectable at a dis- 
tance only in relation with clear water and ice. The 
green of the eider's head is really green, between that 
of rockweed and the wash of surf over ledges. The 
red of crossbills, pine grosbeaks and young willow 
ptarmigan is bricky to purple, matching best the bronze 
reds of the spruces in the times of low morning and 
evening sun when the birds are quiescent. Bright 
colors do not much appear in the main schemes of the 
birds, they are merely touched, tipped, sometimes with 
the light-dispersing agency of crests or fringes. 

The solid red brown of the red-breasted merganser 
appears a river bank or ground color, as does that of 
the mallard drake, robin and chewink, and, as to its 
head, at least the summer merganser. That the bank- 
colored head of the latter can serve its purpose ap- 
peared with some emphasis during a trip on the Peri- 
bonka rather long ago. An old merganser left a nearly 
grown brood doing their best ahead of us in mid- 
stream and made for the shore, my friend following 
with the forward canoe, gun ready. We in the rear 
canoe could see the bird settle at the water line, its 
tail perhaps in the water and body sloping upward. 
Its head was invisible to us against the brown bank. 
To our eyes the bird was a perfect beach stone of some 



Observations 341 

twenty pounds weight. There were few or no real 
stones near. When my friend in the bow was within 
a rod or so of the bird, his eye doubtless in the bushes 
a yard or two above water, the thing exploded straight 
for his canoe, kicking up more water than one would 
believe, until it scraped by and took to wing, leaving 
the hunter beyond speech. 

It was a clean piece of work, but the surprising thing 
was to see it done over again by the same bird a few 
bends below, in exactly the same way. Nor was my 
friend a novice, unless at sheldrakes, and his two canoe- 
men were used to the local rivers. 

The sequel is not in point, but needing ducks we fol- 
lowed the brood until they tired, and standing in the 
bow I missed three or four rifle shots as they popped 
up and under five or six feet away. They were too 
quick. The sight was too much for my Indian steers- 
man, who without warning stood up with his paddle, 
turned the canoe bodily around and fairly hauled it 
along, we supporting, until up with the ducks again. 
Then with his single paddle the Indian twisted, drove, 
backed, shot the canoe about like a devil. When a 
duck came up he struck the water with the flat of his 
paddle to make it dive before getting a full breath, 
and soon he began to hit the ducks themselves; in the 
end he got most of them. Between us C. and I had a 
lesson that day in sheldraking. 

In most species the plan does not descend to 
dead, muddy colors. They are only so at a distance. 
Near to they are alive, sometimes iridescent. It is 
so even in the summer sheldrake, certainly in the mal- 
lard. .Red browns are mostly rich, grays silky. The 
smutty Labrador jay is perhaps at the bottom of the 



342 Labrador 

list — it is a ghoul bird ; yet in winter, floating about 
and more silvery, there is more to say for it. There 
is little or no sheen about the summer wolverene, and 
some other species in moult phases, while with young 
birds generally the matter of beauty is certainly one 
of the future. 

The task of disguising a bird's head, and at the same 
time beautifying it to emphasis, for the same reason 
that we do ours, is met rather boldly at ti-mes. In some 
species the head is simply cut off, made black, as in 
the robin, or white as in our eagle — the one disap- 
pearing against black shadows, the other against the 
sky. In young birds, without strength or weapons, 
and that only nose the ground for concealment, the 
head agrees in tone with the back. The final resource 
of the old bird is his agility, craft and sometimes fight- 
ing powers ; commonly he must see well, his head must 
be out ; he must be ready to dodge, flee or maybe strike. 
In our present knowledge we can see fairly the factors 
that make for initial concealment and discovery, but 
of the final circumstances of pursuit and escape or 
capture, the field naturalists' part, we have little that 
is intimate. In the final passages the balance, which- 
ever way it turns, may be close, and the partly mental 
elements that enter into the more or less instantaneous 
decision past measuring. We do know that visual 
appearance counts in such warfare, even as a person 
in white is easier to deal with at night than one that 
matches the darkness, and a warship in one color easier 
than one cut into sections by camouflage. 

To return to the simple harmonizing of creatures 
with their surroundings, the northeastern caribou in 
his light and dark grays may be taken as an instance of 



Observations 343 

average protection in a rather wide range of condi- 
tions. At a distance he is well matched with the gray 
of the barrens and particularly with the boulders every- 
where ; it is very hard to tell him from one of the lat- 
ter when lying. His mane, besides breaking the wind, 
betters his chance against a throat snap from a wolf, 
who cannot well estimate the actual throat line and may 
come off with only a mouthful of hair, as a pursuer 
sometimes does with the tail feathers of a bird. In 
the distance the light colored mane destroys the under 
shadow of the neck and goes far to obliterate the fore 
part of the animal. 

A speculation goes with the marked back-sweep and 
level return of the northeastern type of horns. 
Whether the .matter is accidental or not, it does repro- 
duce the whitened spruce tops of the semi-barrens, 
killed perhaps by ice storms and turned over level to 
remain. It might be argued that such deer as had these 
imitative horns would tend to survive the others and 
perpetuate the type. 

The only feature of the moderate sized black bear 
of the country that makes for protection in daylight is 
its light brown muzzle, after the type of the donkey 
and wild horse, which is apparently to be taken as a 
partial head effacer. 

The case of the wolverene is notable from its having 
a night coloration, somewhat skunk-like, in winter, and 
a day one, simulating a boulder, in summer. The use 
of this shift is plain, the creature is probably a night 
hunter by preference, at any rate it has to be one in 
winter, when there is little daylight, while in summer 
the case is reversed, there is no darkness to speak of 
and a day pelage is obviously the one to have. 



344 Labrador 

For a long time the creamy tint of the winter wol- 
verene's light band was a puzzle to me. By analogy 
with most night colorations it should have been whiter. 
Finally it came to me that the shade was not to be re- 
lated merely to light, but partly to the sky, if not 
wholly to the tinted caribou moss over the country. 
The correspondence is close. On large old wolverenes 
the pale band or oval can hardly be traced, the animal 
coming to a nearly uniform dark maroon color. In so 
abandoning their earlier markings they may be classed 
with old eagles and other old birds already mentioned, 
but in the present case the change is progressive, and 
complete only in really old animals. As far as enemies 
are concerned these powerful crafty old beasts would 
seem to need no concealment, even without their tree 
climbing resource. If one was backed among boulders 
it is hard to see what a bear or troop of wolves could 
do with him. The species has black undersides, or 
nearly black, an unusual thing when the back is not 
the same color. The opposite way, as in most fish, 
dark above and shaded to white below, is by far the 
usual one. This makes a creature look flat, unreal. 
Under usual conditions a partridge seen sideways in 
a tree is a mere ghost. The reverse is true when a 
creature has its light side up. Then it assumes undue 
solidity and seizes the eye. So with the wolverene, 
but his black base line seems intended less for the usual 
shadow under a boulder than the slightly raised rim of 
black soil that surrounds most stones of size in the 
barrens — a result of freezings and tha wings of spring. 
In result the creature is made conspicuous rather than 
effaced, but to the same end. 

One might well pause, in these matters, before the 



Observations 345 

colorings of red and black foxes and their intermedi- 
ates. Born in the same litter, and with all factors of 
place and the rest the same, so far as we can see they 
come through one as well as another. So with their 
nearest kin the wolf, who varies well from black to 
white. In more than half it is probably safe to say, 
the answer is simply wits, mind — mind flexible, plan- 
ning, understanding, with the adjuncts of nose, speed, 
teeth and a long spring. The matter of suitability of 
appearance is lost in their sufficiency. Indeed it is hard 
to see how a creature of the universality of the fox as 
a hunter of all small game, by many methods, from the 
thick woods to the treeless open, could be closely har- 
monized to any set of surroundings. There is nothmg 
to tie to either in him or his places. Give him color 
of the dry leaves and the river bank and not much bet- 
ter can be done ; not for the summer or even the winter 
latitudes where the red fox really belongs. He can 
live well enough further north; what matter? he is a 
twilight and night hunter, and in the dark all cats are 
gray, gray enough for one like him. 

The black fox belongs with the north, is seen in our 
home places by few in a lifetime. That his color 
should fit the white north better than that of the red 
seems strange, except for his rear silvering, but as may 
appear he finds something besides snow to resemble 
even there. His unblending mix by patches and other 
awkward presentments, in cross litters with the red, sug- 
gests his being off by himself for a long past in what- 
ever surroundings best suited the coloration. 

By latitudes the gray southern fox laps upon the red, 
the red upon and perhaps through the silver, the silver 
upon the arctic white. The counterfoil of both black 



346 Labrador 

and red in the open north is chiefly wind swept rock ; 
there are always wind swept ledge points and stones 
showing through in the broken ground where they 
hunt. The snowfall is not great in these regions and 
most of it is swept into hollows. Photographs of 
arctic lands, taken summer or winter, usually show 
bare ground. The barren ground caribou has not the 
great snowshoe feet of the woodland sort in the snowy 
south, nor if some hunters are to be believed, is the 
track of a black fox as large as that of a red. This 
might well be. 

A main reward of one's winter trips is the really 
snow creatures like the ptarmigan that turn white in 
winter. In summer the ordinary ptarmigan differs 
not much in its average brown from the common vary- 
ing hare, the young birds running to a strong rufous 
toward the head. Withal even the hare may not be as 
variable, one I saw in September at Eskimo river 
looked blue gray at twenty yards distance. Here the 
country was gray with moss but for areas of spruce 
scrub. This is so dense that a rabbit once in it would 
need little color protection, being nearly as safe as if 
in a hole. The specimen I saw seemed to match the 
gray moss pretty well, but after all may have only been 
turning white for winter. The summer color of the 
arctic hare is certainly gray, blue gray set off with 
black and white, like the hilltop stones of its summer 
place, and so with the rock ptarmigan. Both, like the 
summer wolverene, are bold deceptions, and singularly 
successful ones; the inadventurous brown of the wood 
hare and willow ptarmigan is much easier to cope with. 
The varying hare or northern rabbit never quite as- 
sumes the Arctic, only the tips of his hair turning white. 



Observations 347 

In windy times he can take few chances on the open 
snow for the brown streaks that open with the puffs. 
It is not so bad for him among the sprouts, with their 
similar color, but in the white windy open he Hngers 
not. The arctic hare does, sits as he will, in his long 
dense fur white to the very skin. The Arctic fox has 
the same woolly white fur. I have seen only its tail 
in summer, between rocks; it was of a discouraging 
Isabella drab appearance. 

An Eskimo has mentioned the sea pigeon or black 
guillemot as turning white in winter. I have seen the 
young birds in a ghostly between stage in October, as 
born of the ice edge where they were. , But the change 
in an old bird, jet black save for its wing patches, to 
white, if it occurs, would be the most startling of the 
winter transformations. 

The snowy owl does not yield wholly to either sum- 
mer or winter surroundings, though an old one can be 
very nearly white. The weasels I have seen went from 
summer brown or gray brown to absolute winter white. 
A lemming skin or two that turned up at a mission 
were silvery. 

The pine grosbeak type of coloration, the upper parts 
dull red or yellow, may reasonably be taken as of con- 
cealing effect when the birds are at rest, particularly in 
the tinted lights of morning and evening. They repeat 
the bronzed spruce ends. But the true morning tinted 
species are the roseate ones, the rosy gull of the actual 
Arctic, the rosy tern, the spoonbill and others of the 
tropics. In a late year it was a surprise to me to find 
the willow ptarmigan within this group. During a 
great deal of experience with the bird I had taken it as 
white. The color first showed in one that fell on its 



348 Labrador 

back in a brook channel, at the time an abrupt snow 
hollow four or five feet deep, where the natural blue 
shadow became bluer than ordinary by reflection from 
the sides. Intensified in the same way between the 
body and relaxed wings of the bird, and brought out by 
the blue background, appeared a strong rose color. 
Once seen, it was plain in any bird, all over, though the 
old ones showed it most. This was toward the Hud- 
son's Bay divide north of Lake St. John, in 19 13. In 
a later year I mentioned the matter to an observing 
white hunter in the lower gulf, and he simply remarked, 
" They're red." 

So far as I know the fact has escaped the books, 
though probably known to many who have known the 
bird in the life. The overlookmg by students of this 
wide spread snow creature as within the morning 
tinted group is probably from the early fading of the 
color, as with all organic pinks, after the bird is shot. 
Students generally are not out in the north in winter 
and skins they have examined have probably been 
white. 

Specimens I brought in seemed to have faded about 
half in three weeks, though stronger then than in a 
rosy tern that had been kept a year or more in the dark. 
The color seems to associate with the red already men- 
tioned in the summer young. There seems a definite 
pigmentation toward red in the species. Rock ptar- 
migan, with their gray heads and upper parts, may well 
be snow white in winter. 

The special danger time of the willow ptarmigan 
would seem to be when quiescent at morning and eve- 
ning. Then they are nested into the snow under the 
evergreens and alders, inert and easily approached. 



Observations 349 

At these times of day the birds tone with the tinted 
light that breaks through the cover. To our eyes the 
tint passes for white, at a distance. A collection of 
thirteen remarkably successful snow landscapes I have 
lately seen, the snow being in sun, all showed free use 
of red in arriving at the snow effect. 

Seen sideways even a ptarmigan would show some 
shading below and perhaps some lightness above, under 
usual conditions. This is met by the slanting back bar 
of the tail primaries, hidden from front and back by 
white covert feathers. The bar perfectly simulates 
alder ends sticking at angles through the snow, and is 
taken for one, but at the same time holds the eye and 
nearly destroys its power of distinguishing the main 
bird. Thayer's instance of a blot on water-marked 
paper is in point — while the paper is clean the water- 
mark is easy to see, but alongside of an ink blot it is 
hard to make out. The black ptarmigan eye, looking 
like an alder bud, serves the same end, and perhaps the 
black tip on the ears of various white hares. 

Before the great war the suggestion that certain 
large creature patterns in nearly black and white, 
secant colorations Thayer names them, could be in any 
way protecting, aroused almost violent protest. Many 
birds such as drake eiders and bluebills fall under the 
description and various animals over the world. They 
are cut across regardlessly. There is no question that 
drake colorations of the sort are conspicuous in most 
situations. One's impulse on coming to a pair of 
spring whistlers is certainly to aim at the showy one. 
Nature may well have a tendency to sacrifice the male 
rather than the female at that season for the good of 
the race. At least the enemy would be drawn away 



m 



350 Labrador 

from the latter. The question is, in case of attack by 
a natural enemy, what of the sequel, the pursuit and 
final capture or escape ? Is not the drake cut into two 
or three unrelated sections harder for the enemy to deal 
with than he would be in a consistent color pattern? 
It has proved so with ships. The cases are curiously 
alike. Furthermore the strength and swiftness of a 
spring bird would enable him to make the most of this 
kind of help. 

TORNGAT 

The really interesting question of the re-establish- 
ment of fish and other life after the ice period is how 
far it proceeded from the coastal or Torngat range in 
the northeast. The range stood above the ice flow, an 
island and a large one, between the Atlantic and the 
vast moving sheet westward. Side streams from the 
latter found their way east through low places in the 
range, and there was a great discharge through Hud- 
son's Straits, but the main movement of the ice was 
north to the polar sea; and of course, as Low has re- 
marked, toward open water. In the far north the land 
was six hundred feet higher than now, and the sea 
passages correspondingly deeper and wider, with what- 
ever of different currents and tides from the first ones. 
Something of this part must have been changed, the 
Labrador current may have been reversed for all we 
know, its bergs going north. 

It seems likely that so large an unglaciated area as 
the present one, possibly two hundred miles by forty or 
fifty, carried some life through the ice period. The 
climate should have been better than that of present 
day Greenland, with its fairly large fauna. The pres- 



Observations 351 

ent warm wind of Labrador, from southwest, was cut 
off by the central cap, but winds from southeast and 
east might have pretty well taken its place. 

The question may even be whether there were trees. 
Whether or no, the occurrence of the lake trout and 
whitefish on the Atlantic side of the region, and some 
peculiarities of the Labrador caribou, are easier ac- 
counted for by their having held over somewhere near 
by than their coming fifteen hundred or two thousand 
miles across country after the ice was gone. Almost 
certainly some life held on. One's natural first thought 
of conditions between the great cap and the pole as 
more Arctic than anything we know, and certainly 
lifeless, is a good way beyond the fact. The winter 
climate there was, perhaps, less severe than now. 

That general conditions were not the worst is argued, 
aside from geological data, from a bird migration 
route, that of the European wheatear. Summering 
along the Labrador well south to Hamilton Inlet it re- 
turns to its African wintering place by Avay of Green- 
land, Iceland and England. Inference is that its route 
cannot have been long cut off by glacial conditions, or 
the bird would have lost its habit of movement. 

The apex of the cap was in the low latitude of 53. 
When the ice began to build the climate may have been 
very nearly the same as now ; a little extra winter pre- 
cipitation, snowfall, was all needed, and is now, for the 
same thing to begin over again. A little more east 
wind and cloudiness would do it. No remarkable cold 
is necessary, in fact great cold is against snowfall. 

Conditions at Mistassini Lake, where in places frost 
remains in the ground all summer, this in the low lati- 
tude of 51°, are considerably due to abnormal cloudi- 



352 Labrador 

ness. The factors to this are the cold, deep lake, a 
hundred miles long, and the warm southwest wind of 
the peninsula, with its natural moisture, blowing 
lengthwise of it. The cold lake, condensing the mois- 
ture, keeps itself shrouded with mist and drizzling rain 
well through the summer. 

The effects of a cloudy summer appeared in the gulf 
in 1912, August being a dark month almost through- 
out. The fishermen complained that they could not 
dry their fish. Off Harrington, two hundred miles 
from the sea, a sharp edged, handsome berg showed 
how little sun there had been. The air might have 
ranged from 38° to 44°, perhaps warmer. It was 
plain that with even milder conditions inland the snow 
would not all go that year, that with continuance of 
such summers the ice-cap would be restored. A 
change in a sea current or prevailing wind might bring 
it about. 

The changes of land elevation that seem a cause in 
these ice-cap matters have not been well explained. 
Geologists have a good deal of toleration for the crust 
sensitiveness theory, and it fits the Labrador showing 
well. When the ice was high the land was low, and 
now that the ice is gone the land is fast rising, is re- 
gaining its former level. Again, Greenland, whose cap 
is probably building, appears to be sinking, as it ought 
to do under the theory. 

But this is met by the fact that along Ellsmere land, 
where glaciation has been least, subsidence and eleva- 
tion have been greatest. As Low observes, we may 
have been taking cause for effect, and the going of the 
ice have been due to a sudden elevation of the land from 
some wholly unknown cause. 



Observations 353 

The total unglaciated area in the north must have 
been large, and if life held over in it anywhere it prob- 
ably did so rather widely, and the presence of land life 
at all argues vegetation too. If both these did not 
exist in the Torngats it would seem extraordinary. 
Their position on the open ocean, their sun of 57°-6o°, 
and large area sheltered from the icefield west, are ad- 
vantages well beyond those of the settled part of 
Greenland today. The very north end of Greenland, 
in 82-83, is bare of ice and has its muskoxen, and in- 
cidentally grass. The snowfall there must be almost 
nothing. . . . One hesitates to mention the resem- 
blance of northeastern caribou horns to the European 
type, or, by the same token, possibility of a northeast 
land route at some time, though it is perhaps lawful, 
taking the map for it, to wonder whether the Appala- 
chian push does really exhaust itself at the present 
polar shore, say at the north of Greenland. The 
chances seem that it does. 

The circulation of currents in the north must have 
been much greater during the ice period than now. 
Everywhere the water was five or six hundred feet 
deeper, the sea passages correspondingly wider, low 
lying land of the present time everywhere submerged. 
A great deal of water from warmer latitudes must have 
passed into the polar area. What such water can ef- 
fect is shown by the Franz Joseph Land polynia, open 
in midwinter at 83° ; and by the open winter route 
around North Cape and the Kola peninsula in 71°. 

It is not certain that higher creatures than have been 
mentioned did not hold over, somewhere north of the 
cap, namely Eskimo — where they were at the time 
has not clearly appeared. They suggest no contact 



354 Labrador 

with other peoples, but rather that they have been away 
by themselves somewhere. Everything they have, 
clothes and means generally, their ways, suggests this ; 
quite as most things about the northern Indians, liv- 
ing near by, look to the south: clothes, means of all 
sorts, ways. Their warm climate inheritance is upon 
them even to its taste in color. The Eskimo holds well 
to the gray, white and black of his surroundings. 

Did the Eskimo bring his scaphoid skull across the 
polar sea, from the river caves of Europe where it be- 
longs ? Our first traces of him are not west or east but 
well to the middle of the continental coast. If he, and 
the creatures on which he depends, outwintered the 
cap not on this side of it but in a decentish climate, as 
Eskimo climates go, on the other, things about them 
would be easier to explain. 



THE END 



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